“I wish I’d known,” my brother-in-law said. “I wish I’d been able to help.”

“Well, I tried hard to make sure nobody did know,” I said.

That’s usually how the conversation starts. The undertone is always ignorance, and regret for that ignorance, as if you could have known. As if I would have in any way let people see past my forced smile and false engagement. As if my mental illness was something I was just going to discuss casually like I would the Lakers or the weather. I mean, that’s just not done. Especially by guys.

Before I was diagnosed, I didn’t know what depression was. I’d seen the commercial with the sad egg and heard the word, but it was always directed at someone else. Not me. I was a happy, funny, jokey kind of guy. I was invincible.

I’ve never lived in an area prone to cold weather, but I have a sense that depression is like black ice. You’re driving along on your way somewhere, or maybe nowhere. There’s a song on the radio. Your fingers are tapping on the steering wheel. Everything is under control. And suddenly, without warning, you’re sliding off the highway, tumbling, wondering what the hell just happened.

In the nine years since I first slid off the highway and into depression, what I have found most disconcerting is how many men, whether they know it or not, have slid off the same patch of highway. Some of them don’t even know it. Some of them are swimming around in their own confusion. Maybe they’re drinking too much or working too many hours or just shuffling through life like it’s quicksand. Maybe they’re cheating or snorting or gambling. The self-distraction is all part of it. That’s the hiding.

While I was chatting with my brother-in-law Saturday night, fireworks popping and whistling not far away, he told me one of his clients killed himself last week. The guy bought a two-million-dollar house, his business collapsed, he couldn’t afford his bug mortgage payments, and he took his own life. Depression? Probably. I’m not a therapist or a psychiatrist, but I’ve been in those scary places where you wonder if trying to rescue yourself is worth the effort.

It is. Do not succumb. Fight. Get help.

Turn into the slide.

My first job after college was writing sports for a newspaper in the Mojave Desert. Because I was the new guy in the department, I was tasked with authoring brief, two-sentence snippets about Little League Baseball games played in our coverage area each night. In the sports journalism world, this chore is the equivalent of hazing freshmen fraternity pledges by dunking their heads in the toilet or making them run naked through the quad. The Little League beat necessarily means fielding phone calls from irate Little League parents who believe their sons were slighted—if not completely disrespected—because their bunt single or bases-loaded walk wasn’t mentioned in a snippet.

“You call yourself a journalist?!” they’d bark. “I’m canceling my subscription to this rag!”

I was 24 years old at the time, and I’ll cop to the fact that these phone called got to me. I was sensitive. I wanted to make my editors happy, and this wasn’t quite what I’d pictured when I dreamed of being a journalist. But in the 15 years since that time, I’ve learned to be grateful for that chore. It helped me develop a thick skin and a measure of perspective. If you put pieces of yourself out there on display—which so many of us do—you must prepare yourself for the inevitability of criticism and, in some cases, personal attack.

That training came in handy a couple of times yesterday.

What I dislike about thick skin is the plain truth that it’s a defense mechanism, and sometimes defense isn’t the appropriate posture. Yes, it’s helpful to be able to deflect the incoming barbs and attacks, but conflicts are a lot easier (and more interesting) to manage when you’re able to throw some punches of your own. But I dare not.

Be the bigger person. Take the high road. Turn the other cheek.

I try.

But lately what I find the hardest posture of all is restraint—and perhaps that’s a sign that my skin isn’t as thick as I thought it was.

People take shots. They just do. And sometimes it feels like shooting back would make it all go away. It’s like an open invitation to stand on top of the table, pound your chest, assert your dominance. But that never ends well. It’s no different than burying hurt feelings under drugs or booze or a half-gallon of rocky road.

Be the bigger person. Take the high road. Turn the other cheek.

I have taken a step back this morning, looked at the bigger picture, and reminded myself that restraint is almost always the smart choice. Not as exciting, nor as fulfilling, but almost always smarter.