I’ve been a little paralyzed to write since the utterly unexpected popularity of my “Depression is a Trip” post. How do you follow something that seems to speak to so many people? And of course, depression tells us that we can’t, that any success was a fluke, that really we’re fakes, and the world will soon discover our deception and unmask us as the failures we are.

I wrote that post for myself, because metaphor helps me think, and for my husband, who wants to solve everything for me because he is an engineer and a man and he loves me. I wrote it because I couldn’t not write it.

All of which is, perhaps, an apologetic lead-up to this post. Which is exactly the point.

One of the most interesting comments on that other post was about apologizing. The commenter’s point was that people with depression should…