I shit you not, when I started to cry at the Bridge it was like a little fat schoolgirl blubbering in the bathroom stall hoping nobody could hear her, wishing recess was never over and she could just hide from the bullies forever. And the tight walls would tenderly close her in until there was nothing left in the whole world except comforting darkness and splendid isolation.

It wasn’t a good cry. Men are allowed to weep in a few precise situations: funerals, drunken bonding and movies with last-minute sports showdowns and/or emotionally distant father figures (which is why “Hoosiers” can make even a fiercely heterosexual linebacker Satanist bawl). I knew when I went to the Bridge I was going to cry, because psychiatric appointments (even with peer counselors) are free passes for manful tears: hard rock resolve pierced ever so briefly by an admission of old guilt, absent love; a moment from deep in our childhood that we spend our waking lives perpetually forgetting.

But I at least figured I had the common badass nobility to hold off the tears until the very end of the session, like Tony Soprano:

DARREN: (nodding resolutely) Well, I guess that solves my brain. Thank you, Peer Counselor, we’ve set all aright and there’s no need to dig any deeper.

PEER COUNSELOR: (takes off glasses) Darren, what about the geese?

DARREN: The geese ... of course ... they symbolize all the sadness I’ve repressed below my chiseled image (a lone tear falls down his burnished cheekbones). Sorry, do you have a tissue? I believe there’s some dust in my eye.

See? Dignity still intact, masculine resolve reaffirmed by a minor dip into feminine emotionality. Instead, this is what happened:

PEER COUNSELOR: So, what do you want to talk about?

DARREN: Well, it’s like, y’see — (descends into loud, uncontrollable whimpering, punctuated by occasional meaningless word vomit for the next half hour)

I didn’t even get a full sentence in, and BAM, I’m a four-year-old with an owchie and wah, wah, wah, snort.

I can count on one hand how many times I’ve told anyone how sad I can get, partially because I’m never sad when I’m talking to someone — a friend, a stranger, a waitress, anyone who can validate my existence — and partially because I’m embarrassed by my own sadness. Depression is so selfish, self-loathing, so boring. There are so many better things to hate in this world, so much that’s far more depressing than a lack of direction, an inability to connect with people, your poor sex life, whatever. When I’ve been at a really bad low point — midway through last quarter, fall of junior year, fifth grade — it’s always because I can’t find the strength to excavate my head out of my ass and engage in the wide world outside me. I feel like the only thing on other people’s minds is me and my idiot failings. Sadness is an existential god complex.

Even writing about it like this feels silly and solipsistic. Woe is me, alas for youth, oh won’t someone hug this poor, beleaguered, upper-middle-class white male private-schooled suburban fratboy Stanford student? But here it is: I went to the Bridge last quarter in the middle of what should have been the happiest week of my life. Suffice it to say, there were banners in White Plaza, Facebook groups, adorably hot sophomore sorority girls insisting I was a hero, ASSU slates begging me for an endorsement and well-paid pricks with esoteric job titles telling me I had bad manners. People I hadn’t talked to in years were emailing me; people I didn’t know knew me. By all rights, I should have felt amazing.

I was crying in the shower, which is the funniest thing in the world because it’s so far beyond sad into pitiful.

What makes it all so strange is not that nobody noticed, but that I actively refused to let them notice. Even making vague implications about my sadness made me feel selfish, weak and pretentious — and I hate feeling weak. So instead it got to the point where I felt myself perched woozily on the edge of tears, a slight wind change from exploding outwards in the most embarrassing display of masculine emotion since Paul Walker tried changing expressions. It was like a gigantic cut oozing pus that I kept hiding until black gangrene covered me like a manic depressive chrysalis. I don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s just a scratch. No, YOU go see a doctor, asshole.

I was lonely, but that’s not an explanation. I was by myself for six weeks last summer and felt nothing but an urge to escape into my journals and a far stronger, unrequited urge to screw a tan, starving-skinny Hungarian girl in various cinematic positions. I never woke up wanting the day to be over so I could go back to sleep, like I did now. I felt further away from the people I loved than I did in nine months of living in Europe. I felt detached from humanity, my only solitude an empty can of Mr. Pibb with a carb on the side and the loneliest video game ever invented, Shadow of the Colossus. I wasn’t even playing: I was just riding around the empty digital world, going to the edge of the island, and staring at the beach. That, my friends, is comically sad: I was so lazy, I couldn’t even stare existentially at a REAL beach.

I’m not writing this because I feel like I need help, because I think my sadness is particularly interesting or profound, or because I like the idea of random people pointing to me and saying, “Look at that sad dude! Hey Saddy, why don’t you cry about it, Saddy McSadderson!” I felt better, I finished the quarter and I went jet skiing in Cabo. (I also had a panic attack, but I’m pretty sure that was the sleep deprivation, the alcohol provision and the Buffalo wings.) I require no anti-depressants beyond sunlight and bikinis. I tend to think of myself as one of the cheeriest people I know.

But I think that I experienced a particularly Stanford form of depression: I got so wrapped up in everything that I felt attached to nothing, so concerned with filling up my time that I felt paranoid about losing every moment. We’re starting the happiest quarter of the year; it’s easy to think that all of this particularly bleak winter quarter was a casual nightmare, that all we needed was the bare whiff of summer weather to cheer us up. And that’s partially true: There’s a reason why Californians are happy and Russians are Russians. But it’s so easy to hide yourself from yourself because someone else might notice, particularly if you’re a guy who geeked out through high school and came here with the decisive plan to become someone better. It’s even easier to feel like sadness is a weakness, and Stanford kids know about hiding weakness, feeding the elephant in the room until it bursts its bloated esophagus.

Sadness isn’t a weakness, though. It’s what makes us strong. A life of pure joy is a bland slice of eternal boredom. We could all use a good cry sometimes. But it’s just cowardice to hide from your friends, to cry into a pillow and assume you’ll feel better eventually. Odds are, they’re doing the same thing.

Darren Franich dedicates this to Nora, who taught him to listen to the voices in his head. He insists that hot girls desperately in search of a sad, wistful romantic should feel no obligation whatsoever to email him at dfranich@stanford.edu.