I watched Click (the Adam Sandler movie) a few years ago and it immediately struck me as a powerful picture  of depression. I’m going from memory, so I may have a few things wrong. SEMI-ACCURATE SPOILERS AHEAD!

The basic story line is that Michael (Adam’s character) wishes for a way to skip through the boring bits of life and get on to the next exciting thing. This being a fantasy, he encounters a magic salesman who provides him with a remote control that he can use to fast-forward real life whenever he likes. What he doesn’t expect is that he would lose control of it and suddenly end up 20 years in the future at his daughter’s wedding. Stunned, he tries to reconnect with his family and finds that they are all estranged from him.

He finds the salesman who sold him the remote and demands an explanation. The magical salesman explains that during the fast-forward process, you are sort of running on “automatic.” He shows Michael how to “flashback” to the last time he spoke to his daughter. Michael watches as she visits him at work; she clearly wants to speak with him about something important.  His “automatic” self just mutters and keeps working. She leaves, crying.

“Talk to her!” Michael tells his auto-self.

“I don’t remember any of this!” he tells the magical salesman, who just shakes his head and says, “Of course you don’t.”

Sometime around 2009, I was on the road to recovery, and I started feeling normal again. I was happy (or happier) and ready to get on with life. My wife was pleased that I was better, but had been suffering as much — or more — as I, and wanted to talk about what had happened.

But every time she brought up a time where I had responded roughly or had said something hurtful — I simply did not remember it. It was difficult to get closure, and it took some time for us to work through the pain and rebuild the trust that had been lost.

One thing I will never forget: How she stood by me.