I imagine if ever there were someone who knew about being brave, it would be Helen Keller.

It's people like her that make the rest of us look like cowards.

Bravery gets so over done these days. Everyday you hear Emporor Bush say "Our Brave Men and Women," and of course they are brave. They are people who risk everything they have for their committment to this country. That doesn't make them without fear. But bravery can be much smaller things. It can be standing up for yourself. It can be choosing to do the right thing. Hell, it can be getting out of bed in the morning.

As someone who has suffered with bouts of depression, bravery is something I needed much more of at those times. When I'd be in the middle of it, I'd just as soon lie in bed as do anything. Leaving the house was an enormous task. At those times, the things generally taken for granted, getting up, getting dressed, going to work, these are all things that required immense effort and, in some ways, bravery. Isn't being brave doing something in spite of your fears or the risks involved? Perhaps it might be described as being fearless. I guess it's all in how you look at it. If you've never suffered through one of these experiences, it's difficult to understand. You feel as if the whole world is falling down around you. Like you are completely incapable of living a normal life. The people you see outside are like aliens. They have their own world. A world of everyday joys and accomplishments, and a world of dissapointments and concerns. You have a world only of pain. Internal pain. A complete lack of self elsteem. It's a difficult thing to pull out of. When people empathize with you and encourage to do the small things, you can feel as if you are being talked down to. When those who don't understand the nature of the beast tell you to get over it, you feel like a complete failure. My issue with the professionals is that they generally fall so far into the empathy that it does little to build any true self esteem.

My stays in hospitals were always failures. They only thing I ever got out of them was that they prevented me from making any other stupid choices while I was there. They generally were bottoming out periods in my life. You don't know despair until you've spent time in a mental health facility. It's like being a second class citizen. This is a strange parallel, but it's much like being in a jail. I've spent the night in a jail. I didn't pay some parking tickets and ended up getting pulled over and spent the night at the county lock up. Jail and a mental ward are damn near identical. Your freedom is completely controlled. The people that work there treat you as cattle and as merely a 'job' they have to do. I know I'm brushing a wide swath over the mental health care field, but I haven't really gotten much positive from it. My oldest sister is schizophrenic. She has two options. Drugs or insanity. She's been hospitalized multiple times. Attempted suicide multiple times. She's had shock treatments, pyschotherapy, you name it. All that can be done for her now is to keep her so drugged that the voices are quiet and she sleeps most of her life away. The majority of the people who live on the street are schizophrenic. The mental health system in this country is pathetic. It's a set of diseases no one wants to think about. My ex wife and her family had the mind set that if I just really wanted to be better, I would be. She once said to me, "It's not a disease like cancer or anything." I guess not. There is no tumor to remove. No chemo. You just suffer.