#depress

…depressive realism. Depression is not the near death experience described by so many, [Kayla Dunn] suggests, but a rebirth in which the new psyche has removed self-delusion. Compared with so-called healthy individuals, depressives are more realistic in their worldview. ↗

— Jan Wong

#coping #depression #mental-health #death

That there is in this world neither brains, nor goodness, nor good sense, but only brute force. Bloodshed. Starvation. Death. That there was not the slightest hope not even a glimmer of hope, of justice being done. It would never happen. No one would ever do it. The world was just one big Babi Yar. And there two great forces had come up against each other and were striking against each other like hammer and anvil, and the wretched people were in between, with no way out; each individual wanted only to live and not be maltreated, to have something to eat, and yet they howled and screamed and in their fear they were grabbing at each other’s throats, while I, little blob of watery jelly, was sitting in the midst of this dark world. Why? What for? Who had done it all? There was nothing, after all, to hope for! Winter. Night. ↗

— A. Anatoli Kuznetsov

#depression #holocaust #ukraine #world-war-ii #death

Gertrude’s remedy for her mood swings was to print up hundreds of black-bordered calling cards embossed with the single word “Woe,” which she handed out gaily declaring, “Woe is me. ↗

— Ross Wetzsteon

#gertrude-stein #dreams

...you are my Lady of Shalott lost in a dream of isolation - I care too much for you - I romanticize depression... ↗

— John Geddes

#isolation #romanticize #tennyson #unconditional-love #dreams

It is so hard to learn to put sadness in perspective so hard to understand that it is a feeling that comes in degrees, it can be a candle burning gently and harmlessly in your home, or it can be a full-fledged forest fire that destroy almost everything and is controlled by almost nothing. It can also be so much in-between ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#control

She pauses several treads from the bottom, listening, waiting; she is again possessed (it seems to be getting worse) by a dream-like feeling, as if she is standing in the wings, about to go onstage and perform in a play for which she is not appropriately dressed, and for which she has not adequately rehearsed. ↗

— Michael Cunningham

#domestic-life #loved-ones #numb-depression #preparation-to-face-the-day #putting-on-an-act

In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead ↗

— Elizabeth Wurtzel

#memories #suicide #suicide

I believe that it may be normal, healthy, and even productive to experience mild to moderate depression from time to time as part of the variable emotional spectrum, either as an appropriate response to situations or as a way of turning inward and mentally chewing over problems to find solutions. ↗

— Andrew Weil

#emotions #experience

...we should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism. But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others', that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties. ↗

— John Piper

#experience

We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this--through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. ↗

— Kay Redfield Jamison

#faith