Welcome to The Last Broken Home.

Most individuals on this earth don't suffer from an obvious or life crippling anxiety or sadness. Most don't have mental breakdowns, or prolonged periods of serious depression. Most are just normal people. They're mostly sane, mostly functional, mostly likable even.

But beneath that most individuals are generally sad and sorry within, and disappointed, if not with their life than with themselves. Rather than the clear depression of people in therapy offices, they wake and live each day with the quiet and subtle depression most all people hold within, a discontent with what life has done to them, given them, and taken from them.

They live in the past, either still regretful of certain bad things which have happened, unwilling to move on, or still obsessed with some positive thing which happened, continually living in the former glory and happiness which has long faded.

They're afraid of tomorrow, of the next bill to arrive, or obstacle which obstructs them, of whatever problem the new day may bring. One more problem they can't handle.

No one is born like this. We are raised in homes which taught such lives, in a society which glorified such lives, by friends, families, and teachers who live such lives. We have known no better.

We're taught English literature rather than self esteem. Physics rather than trust in oneself.

At home, we're taught obedience rather than independence, and fear of the world's dangers rather than a willingness to try, fail, and learn.

In this "home" we live, grow, and mature, never learning how to best become the individual we should and need to become, but instead are pressured in all ways to be and become what others want us to become, whether our parents, friends, bosses, or society itself.

And because of this, much of our earliest memories are of fear and embarrassment. Difficulties with parents, and the fights and disappointments. Alienation and loneliness at school, and the wish to be more popular, smarter, thinner. Feeling less than others; being picked on by those we call our friends or family.

It sucks. We hate it, and we quickly resent our lives, those in it, and, most of all, ourselves. And yet by the end of our youth we have still the rest of our lives to live in the misery we have learned, with the expectations we were given, without the knowledge of ourselves we need to be happy.

We're released to our own care, and we struggle, and we marry, and we suffer, and we separate, and we perpetuate the life we hate to our children. Because that's the way we were raised. Because that's all we know.

Our teen depression becomes our adult depression, and it lingers forever, waxing and waning.

We are all the product of broken homes. But as a society and as individuals we need to re-evaluate what is a broken home, and do what needs to be done to make our home the last broken home.

Adam Alvarado is the founder of, and principal contributor to, The Last Broken Home, a self development blog dedicated to his journey from teen depression to self esteem, and dedicated to examining the effect of our youth and upbringing on the result and challenges of our lives..