Everybody breaks sooner or later, Bob. Anyone can drown. Sometimes you see it. Most often, youdon’t because the body protects and the skin hides, so drowning doesn’t look like drowning and somepeople scar so nicely. Take it from an expert.
Diversion is the absolute worst remedy for depression. When we ignore the things that haunt us or taunt us, not only do they keep coming back, but they’re bigger and stronger each time they return. Stop shoving us depressives in that direction.
It’s so difficult to describe depression to someone who’s never been there, because it’s not sadness. I know sadness. Sadness is to cry and to feel. But it’s that cold absence of feeling— that really hollowed-out feeling.
Find your "self-culture" is hero's work. I liken it to the journey of a warrior who is preparing for battle. There is no violence in the battle, but there is a plan of attack and a methodology that you need to employ to complete the journey. Page 12
I closed the door. Other people got husbands and children; I got a bag of lettuce. I hurled myself on the floor and sobbed. The worst thing about trying to get myself undepressed were the days when it seemed like I hadn’t made any progress at all.
You can talk about depression as a "chemical imbalance" all you want, but it presents itself as an external antagonist - a "demon," a "beast," or a "black dog," as Samuel Johnson called it. It could pounce at any time, even in the most innocuous setting.
Slowly, my feelings started to shrivel up. The few that managed to survive the constant beatings staggered around like wounded baby deer, just biding their time until they could die and join all the other carcasses strewn across the wasteland of my soul.
You wanted to become a doctor to help people and feel better at the end of your job, I think, watching them, as the nurse takes my hand. But I don't think you do feel better at the end of the day. You look like humans have constantly disappointed you.
Madness is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting,too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression.
Today I am in love. Today is Tuesday, although the day of the week has no influence or impact on the fact that I’m in love. It could be Monday and I’d still be in love, though in that case I would be both in love and depressed at the same time.
Finding your "self-culture" is hero's work. I liken it to the journey of a warrior who is preparing for battle. There is no violence in the battle, but there is a plan of attack and a methodology that you need to employ to complete the journey. Page 12
It is two years since I emerged from depression and I no longer want myself dead. I want myself alive. I am no longer my own enemy. Depression is the enemy. The monster lives at my gate. My hope is that, with sufficient effort and luck, I can keep it there.
depression in its major stages possesses no quickly available remedy: failure of alleviation is one of the most distressing factors of the disorder as it reveals itself to the victim, and one that helps situate it squarely in the category of grave diseases.
The real you is not sad, angry, depressed, ashamed, hurt, bitter or lost. These things are not real. They feel real but they're not. As spiritual beings living a brief human existence, this is not who we are. We are beautiful, radiant, joyful and loving.
It's difficult. I take a low dose of lithium nightly. I take an antidepressant for my darkness because prayer isn't enough. My therapist hears confession twice a month, my shrink delivers the host, and I can stand in the woods and see the world spark.
