And then I said, “I used to suffer from depression.” The argument stopped cold. To this day I’m not sure what caused me to blurt out one of my greatest secrets to my father in the car that night, but I was pretty sure I had just won the argument. I had slammed the proverbial ace of spades down on the table, sharing something so personal and shocking that it stopped my father’s case in its tracks.

“What?” he said.

I went on to explain how I had suffered from depression for nearly five years now, and how no one in my family had ever noticed or said a thing to me about it. It fit the argument well, and as we pulled up to Brubacher Hall, I looked in his eyes and saw the he was connecting the dots.

I had indeed secretly battled with depression in high school and had missed a great deal of life because of it, school and social life included. At least twice each week I “didn’t feel good,” and stayed home. The school I did attend I did with great contempt and skated by on C’s and D’s. I had been distant in high school, and had been without many friends or interaction with my family. Time spent at home was time spend alone.

It made sense, and he knew it did. He had simply never put two and two together. A two-hour-long conversation ensued, in which I essentially spilled my bitter and angry guts to him. He sat silently for most of this, finally realizing the mistakes he had made and the things he had never even looked for.

Of course, there’s plenty more to the story. In fact, there’s about six years’ worth more to the story, but it just seems that when writing it down on paper, I don’t need to explain those things.