How about this one?

Depression is your rival at *insert competitive sport of choice* and whenever you are winning at *foozball* your depression just goes ahead and resets the counter.

Sometimes it will let you get a slight lead. Just enough so that you’re feeling pretty good about yourself, and then PLINK, it resets the counter again.

Depression may get a lead at various times, but it cannot ever truly win. Because only humans can win at *foozball,* and depression is just a condition that humans happen to have, not an actual human. And so no matter what, eventually you pull into the lead and depression is forced to reset the counter. Sending you back to the start, and making you feel like you’ve lost everything.

And your depression needs you to keep playing. It can only beat you when you’re playing, and so it finds ways of preventing you from wising up and walking away. It convinces you that not playing would be a wuss move, and it jeers at you. It distracts you from the fact that you don’t really care about *foozball* that much anyway.

Still, you’re not allowed to go below zero at *foozball* and so when the counter resets, you’re actually tied with depression. And that’s the moment to stop playing and just walk away as your depression throws a hissy. It will yell and scream, trying to convince you to play another round. And you may go back again and again to play *foozball* with your depression, even though you know it’s not really worth it.

You don’t need to beat your depression. You don’t need to win and force your depression to lose. If you tie your depression and then end the game at that, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost. It just means that you have found something better to do. Eventually, your depression will as well.