If anyone deserves an Oscar for exceptional acting, it’s a depressive. My guardian angel, Ann, told me the other day that she has spent more than half of her life pretending to be a happy person.

“People have no idea I suffer like I do. When they learn about my manic depression, they shake their heads. Because I appear to be so content and jovial.”

Ah yes. “Fake it ’til you make it.” My epitaph.

For at least 18 months, forty-five of my fifty-minute therapy sessions went to acting lessons: how to feign a stable and functional person until I became one.

Two days out of the psych ward (the second time), I played the part of an author who was throwing a successful pub date party for the release of her book “The Imperfect Mom” (which had been compiled pre-breakdown). I wanted desperately to be this person, so I visualized myself with a few good months behind me, confidently discussing the stories I had gathered before an audience of prominent editors and respected writers.

With sweaty palms and a racing heart, I sent out close to 50 electronic invitations (evites) to the classy list of contributors–like journalist Judith Newman and Baby Einstein founder Julie Aigner-Clark–and to all my publishing friends in New York, most of whom were clueless about my previous year in hell.

Five days after I sent the evites, my literary agent’s assistant e-mailed me a list of possible caterers, wineries, bar tenders, and places where I could rent coat racks and glasses.

As I read over his suggestions, I panicked.

“Oh God. Oh God. I can’t do this,” I said.

“What’s the matter?” my sister asked. I was in her kitchen (in Cincinnati, Ohio), checking my e-mails from her computer.

“This New York trip. What am I thinking? I can barely get groceries. I still cry almost every hour. I can’t organize a party for all the publishing people I want to impress. What if I break down in the middle of it? They’ll find out I’m crazy. My career is toast.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll go with you,” she said. “I know wines (she was a sales rep for Ohio Valley Wine). And all we need are some cheeses, crackers, and stuff. Forget the rentals. I can put a party together. It’ll be fine.”

Next came the hard part: learning my lines.

“Pretend that I am an editor with Ladies’ Home Journal,” my therapist said. “I walk up to you and say, ‘Hey Therese! Good to see you. What have you been up to?’ What will you say?”

“Oh. Nothing much. Just hanging out in the community room of a psych ward with Allen, an 85-year-old who has slept with 96 women and wants to make it 97.”

“Try again,” she said. “You are still tutoring at the college, right?”

“Until the dean discovers a whackjob is teaching tomorrow’s leaders.”

“And you are writing your Catholic column, correct? There’s another conversation. And your kids are always great small-talk subjects. Just stay away from the topic of depression.”

On the three-hour Amtrak ride to New York, I memorized my lines, repeated them over and over again, like I was auditioning for an off-Broadway play.

I imagined the key players and rehearsed the dialog. “Naval Academy. Catholic column. Kids. No depression.”

With my sister’s help, I pulled it off! I don’t think anyone suspected that just five weeks earlier I was rooming with an anorexic chick, getting my vitals taken every three hours.

In fact, so successful was the New York party that I repeated the act again a few weeks later, when I met a magazine editor at the Book Expo America in DC. She hugged me tightly and looked at me so sincerely as she asked me, “How are you?”

I immediately began sobbing, pig snorts and everything.

So I guess I have a bit more practicing to do before I’m Meryl Streep and become truly Oscar-worthy.