Mike Bannan is an exclusive journalist for Ozone Radio.

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"There's no reason to live in the shadow of the life you could be living."

As the rain falls here on a Thursday night, after everyone has gone to bed and loneliness has crept into the dark corners of the world, those words, spoken by my friend Whitney, are the words that finally encouraged me to write again.

That encouragement might not last long. It may disappear with a flash of lightning bathing the landscape in electric tumult before disappearing with the chaos and finality of a thunderclap. It may peek from behind the clouds like the pale light of a May full moon before disappearing again. Regardless, I must hang onto the clarity, the illumination, for as long as I can before it disappears.

That clarity tells me I need to write. To write with passion.

Writing with passion, even in the midst of my depression.

Writing with passion, with the same gentleness yet authority that befits the falling rain of a spring thunderstorm, disappeared a long time ago. It started to disappear with the onset of my listlessness, with my depression, creeping forward like the first clouds of a rainstorm. The realization that I needed help, though, hit me like the resounding thunderclap that shakes the house while I am the only one still up, keeping watch over the night and the travelers of darkness, of the witching hour.

Of the lonely.

The lonely. I have called myself one of the lonely for the past five years. It started when I decided to fight my battle with grief, the grief over my aunt's passing in December 2003, by myself. The clouds first crept in when I visited my dying aunt on her deathbed that November, in a dark plastic room where the window overlooked the desolation row of the bare trees and lifeless evening over the quiet row homes of Fox Chase in Northeast Philadelphia. The following Monday, I remarked to my high school math teacher "I visited my aunt on her deathbed...it really changes you" before nearly breaking into tears.

The room quieted.

The room stared. The students gazed at me, out of the corner of my eye I saw what I know to be concern. What I knew to be my weakness then.

Don't break down, I told myself as I sat down.

Turn away from everyone. I turned away as I blinked back the tears, the rainstorm, pulled myself together. I'd deal with it alone.

As I sit here writing, I realize that I never did.

Turning away into loneliness is the hallmark of depression. That depression started around then. I started shutting down, giving up, putting off homework and instead playing Madden until 2 a.m. when I had to be up at 6 a.m. to catch my bus to school. I attributed my listlessness to just my shutting down from the stress of junior year at a college preparatory school. The clouds would go away, I believed, even as they grew thicker by each passing day, after my uncle had a seizure at the Thanksgiving dinner table and died the following Sunday in 2004, even while I blew off college applications the next year, my senior year of high school, not caring whether I went to college or not.

Lightning struck. I realized that my parents busted ass to get me through high school. I realized that they sacrificed a lot to bring me to visits to college campuses like Pittsburgh, where I ended up going.

That flash of lightning, that clap of knowledge that bathed the ever darkening and ever lengthening shadows of my mind in the garish electric light of epiphany, rekindled the flame inside just long enough for me to finish my college applications.

The fire went out again. That's okay, I told myself. I only have senioritis. Soon things would clear up. Never mind that in the past two semesters, my GPA had plummeted from 4.0 to 3.0. even as my course load lessened, even as I made better friendships while my high school career came to a close.

It's okay. I just have senioritis.

Part of depression is not knowing how messed up you are. Part of depression is only thinking that you're the only one messed up, that no one wants to hear your problems. Nobody, you think as the clouds grow so dark that perdition's flames seem to be just inches away from you inside the low-rumbling clouds, cares enough to hear your problems, and no one ever will.

Those clouds followed me. They followed me to Pittsburgh, where I left the good friends I made in high school, the ones who helped me take my mind and my eyes of the gathering clouds. They gathered as I started my college career uncertain of my friends, uncertain of who would care, uncertain of who would help me wall up the grief over my aunt. They gathered when I decided to not believe in God after my aunt died. They followed me when I decided to stop drawing, to stop creating, to stop caring. They followed me when my GPA hit 2.0 second semester of my freshman year of college.

When I lost my umbrella early on first semester, I didn't buy a new one. I didn't care whether I got wet. It was only rain. Never mind the colds and sickness. Who would care what happened?

All hallmarks of depression. Depression obscures your interests with gray. Depression clouds your path ahead so much that getting out of bed can be impossible.

Lightning struck again. I needed to believe in God, to believe in what was important to me once. That light bathed the path ahead just long enough for me to search for a new ray of light. I found a ray named Kelli, a sweetheart with a boyfriend who believed in God and called me her soul mate. I lived for her, for she would be my future.

The light went out again when she disappeared. Getting out of bed became difficult again.

I'm just heartbroken, I told myself. Never mind the fact that no woman had ever had that hold on me, that getting out of bed was never an issue before my junior year of high school. I'd fight through it.

So I kept fighting for the past three years without her. I made great friendships and had great times, and achieved a GPA of 3.5 spring semester junior year and a GPA of 3.4 fall semester senior year. I even dated a girl for five months - my first girlfriend. Her name was Kristen.

Still, the loneliness. Still, I missed Kelli. Still, the sadness of not having found true love during the time I did not date my ex-girlfriend. But I'd be okay, I told myself. The clouds crept closer. The clouds sank so low that I stopped cooking and taking care of myself. The clouds hung so low that I could not see a future - something my friend Whitney tells me is a common sign of depression. When I believed I had no future, I considered vaulting over a railing on the third floor of the Cathedral of Learning and jumping down to the Common Room floor below.

That day was cloudy, rainy. That day I walked out of my stats class, at the time with a failing average, unsure of whether I would graduate on time. No graduate school had accepted me. I'd only finished one application, and one of the letters of recommendation had not reached them yet. I had run broke from my not cooking, from my sadness.

I stood at the railing.

I'd long stopped writing for pleasure. Writing had by this point become a chore.

Jump, called a voice.

Jump, called the clouds.

I stood there for ten minutes, considering my death. Devastate my friends? Normally no. But then...then it seemed so tempting.

I stepped back.

I realized I need help.

I realized I have depression.

Many people never get help. Many people live. Many people live without getting that help...yet they never really live. As Whitney said to me tonight, many people choose to seek that comfort of depression - that's one of the traits of the disease.

I finally heard the rain.

I would not accept it.

I bought an umbrella in Pittsburgh. I was tired of getting wet. I would care what happened.

I talked to my doctor. I told him these things to get help.

Many people never bring themselves to do this. They find this process overwhelming and frightening, according to Whitney, who battled depression herself. So did I. I couldn't tell my parents. I'd never get help if I had. But I had to tell someone.

Soon I will start seeing someone. A professional.

Tonight, as I listen to the weather outside, I heard the rain go away.

And so will my rain.

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