Depression is not something you can just buy a Hallmark card for. You can’t just mail one to someone with a prewritten greeting and tell them that you hope they feel better, but they should just get over it. Depression is the equivalent of being buried in a thirty-foot hole and having twenty shovels at your convenience, at arms-length away, but being too exhausted or indifferent to use even one of them to dig yourself out.
Depression isn’t like the weather; an umbrella can’t stop the storms from coming. They’ll just find another way in instead. The most inappropriate thing to do for someone with depression is tell them that it will get better. That’s scripted bullshit and you probably know it. You don’t have to be perfect; you don’t have to hold their entire heart.
You just have to hold their hand.