Lemme explain one way that the disease of depression can work.

I'm going to assume that all of the people reading this have never committed suicide. I mean, for all I know, there is really good broadband in the afterlife, and so I could be wrong. But, probably, many of you don't know what it's like. So let me tell you a story. This isn't the ONLY story, but it's one that can happen. It's based a little on what I know of the clinical work on depression, a little on what I learned working at the suicide hotline, and a lot on what it can be like for me. I'm not telling Robin Williams's story here, but I'd like to comment a bit about what I assume he was going through. Again, this might not be anything like the true story, but it's a possible story.
( cut at the suggestion that this can be triggery. )

Elsewhere on LJ: Rome thoughts.

theferrett and Gini recently went to Rome, and he's been posting about it. He did a short post about the (very few) things he DIDN'T like about Rome, and mentioned how hard it is to get non-bottled water, so he had a tendency to feel thirsty because he wasn't going to hydrate on wine. Some people -- including me -- asked why he didn't just drink from the water bubblers all day long to hydrate, and he said that he hadn't seen any.

Those of you who are "old Rome hands" may be giggling. But it makes perfect sense from an American point of view. The water bubblers are too beautiful for us to recognize as water bubblers.

Oh -- non-New-Englanders: a "water bubbler" is what we call a "drinking fountain". Rome is sometimes called "the city of fountains", but it's not obvious to Americans that almost all those decorative fountains are also practical. They just look decorative.

And they ARE decorative. They're just ALSO drinking fountains.

I mean, you don't wash your dishes in, say, the Trevi Fountain. But other than a few of those, the decorative fountains are there to fill your water bottles, wash your hands, drink directly from if the water arcs up, fill up buckets for mopping floors, stuff like that.

But we Americans aren't used to things being BOTH decorative AND practical. It's just not how we think. I wouldn't have known that you can drink from them if Lis hadn't read it in a travel book before we went; the rest of our family wouldn't have known it if we hadn't told them.