Almost everyday, and this has been happening since I can remember, I would wish that I would never had been born. I didn't feel I was part of the whole. Even within my own family sometimes.

At the same time, I was always the smartest kid in the class and got the best grades. I was a cheerleader. I did do the things that other students do. Nobody would have known.

One of the things that truly disturbed me, very much, when my children were children, sometimes I would lash out at them with great irritation when they had done nothing that they didn't do all the time and nothing that was terrible.

I had classic signs of not being able to concentrate very well on things. That has been the key definer for me.

When one is really, truly depressed, there is a constant feeling of pressure that's physical. And that feeling disappeared when I got the appropriate medication. As soon as it got into my system, I was glad to be alive. And you know, I just thought, "ah, this must be the way most people go through the world." There was a happiness that I had never felt in my whole life.

I've no longer tried to hide anything about my depression. I have informed people and I have thought it was important for me to talk particularly to young women who are my students and identify myself as having this situation and that I have mainly been able to control it with the new medications.