You need to stop defining "optimism" as "naïveté." It's not. Optimism does not mean "a foolhardy lack of preparation" it means "a positive outlook."

Painting optimists as people that "throw their hands up in the air" and go "WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE DIDN'T KNOW!!! WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED!' is fucking offensive.

Just so you know - I had about 500 words typed out in response to you. Then I tried to click on the parent in chrome (which I've recently switched back to) and poof gone. And then I ran some errands and came back, got my coffee, sat down to start over but instead decided fuck it. Wanna know why?

We're enabling you. Here we are, concerned and sincere, offering up a dozen thoughtful opinions and anecdotes, all so you can bat them down. Because you're a special little flower. Your depression is something new under the sun (it always is). Your struggles are somehow different from everyone else's (they always are). Your funk deserves to be indulged, fed, wallowed in because unlike everyone else on the planet that has ever dealt with depression, you've somehow earned yours.

By the time you were born I'd been depressed for seven years. I'd be depressed for two more. But that's nothing. I've got a friend who has battled clinical depression for longer than you've been alive. I've been dealing with my parents' depression for almost as long as your parents have been alive. We've all earned our depression but until we're ready to piss it away all we're doing is hoarding grief.

I said last night that depression is a wall - you either build it up or take it down brick by brick. Build it up, and you can say "look at this marvelous wall I have built to separate myself from the world! Look at all the effort it took!" Take it down and you can say "holy shit I can't believe I had to spend that much effort just so I can see the neighbor's yard." But you can also say "howdy, neighbor!"

I'm not interested in making arguments against your straw man so that you can feel self-righteous in your dudgeon. I have better shit to do with my time. Know I'm not saying this to you - I'm saying this to your depression, which is clearly driving the bus at the moment.

But hey - right there, is the point. An optimist? He'll get my counsel. He's interested in finding solutions. A pessimist? He's interested in proving there's no solutions and fuck that guy. I'm in the problem solving business and if you're not, get the fuck out of my way.

We're here and we're ready to help. But I, for one, am not the least bit interested in holding up a punching bag so you can rail against enemies you don't have. And again - this is the depression, it isn't you. But I'm only human and if my choice is spending time on someone who wants to spend time with me or spending time with someone spoiling for a fight, the pugilist is shit outta luck.