Compared to bipolar’s magic, reality seems a raw deal. It’s not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it’s the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity – the realization of illnesss, the humiliating...

I wanted to scream as I stood there, my toes hanging over the edge of the dock. I wanted to let a gut-wrenching howl rip from my disfigured throat toward those clouded skies. I wanted...

The minutes felt as long as years and I couldn’t be in the sort of time that didn’t move, that instead stood still and all I could think of was being allowed to die, being...

This will sound strange, and yet I’m sure it was the point: it was a bit like being high. That, for me, anyway, had always been the attraction of drugs, to stop the brutal round...

Sometimes darknessis the beauty I am made of—

My life was a wreck. I had nothing, no material possessions, unless debts counts. Fourteen pairs of shoes that were too small for me was all I had to show after a lifetime of profligate...

When I noticed other people, I wondered what it was like to be alive. They did not know, could not know, how I felt inside. My shell still passed for normal. I felt like I...

Desdemona, mourning her parents, was still imprisoned by the past. And so she stood on the mountain, looking down at the emancipated city, and felt cheated by her ability to feel happy by everybody else.

(…) Since I was a kid.””Which you refer to as ‘back when you were happy.'””Right.

I’ve been married but I’m not anymore. And I still believe in love.

You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed.

Something, somewhere, knows what’s best for me and promises to keep sending me people and experiences to light my way as long as I live in gratitude and keep paying attention to the signs.

I’m tired of justifying why I love someone. I’m done with the explaining.

Even the demons are encouraged when their chief is “not lost in loss itself.

I remember a scared, young girl hiding in the guise of arrogance and rebellion. I remember feeling lost in a world where everyone else seemed to have it all figured out. I remember the tears...

Grief comes and goes, but depression is unremitting.

It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somewhere an element is lacking which would permit me to continue.

Suffering is one very long moment. We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return. With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle...

Sorrow on another’s face often looks like coldness, bitterness, resentment, unfriendliness, apathy, disdain, or disinterest when it is in truth purely sadness.

I was woken by a shell-burst in the trench of sleep. Heart skipping, with eyes fighting light, my thoughts sprang up like a field of starlings startled by a farmer’s gunshot, a thousand separate, autonomous...

Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.

Depression is a lying bastard.You’ll have better days, I promise you.

Slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself recovering. After a few weeks, the darkness began to recede; my appetite for life returned. Haven was wonderful; she understood and nursed me through these weeks until I...

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,Which finds no natural outlet or relief,In word, or sigh, or tear.

To all who struggle with depression or suicidal thoughts: you are not alone. we are all on this journey together. I promise you that there is hope. Let us reach out to one another and...

I don’t know why we take our worst moods so much more seriously than our best, crediting depression with more clarity than euphoria. We dismiss peak moments and passionate love affairs as an ephemeral chemical...

There is nothing for you in this bleak hospital room but a cold and empty nothingness that has no answers, can give no peace, will provide no comfort to the living.

Acquainted with the NightI have been one acquainted with the night.I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.I have outwalked the furthest city light.I have looked down the saddest city lane.I have passed by...

I would if somebody would want to but of course nobody would want to so I wouldn’t want to force anybody to want to.

When people have trouble with their emotions – a bout of anxiety or depression, say, or seasonal gloominess – they often want science to pinpoint an offending neurotransmitter in the way that a witness picks...

I woke up feeling alone, so lonely. The night before, I had cried myself to sleep. I lay there on the floor, listening to the tube trains passing beneath me. I thought, All those hundreds...

I can feel the hurt. There’s something good about it. Mostly it makes me stop remembering.

It’s so difficult to breathe ,to live in such a boring society

My unhappiness precluded all else; unhappiness is a kind of narcissism, in which nothing that does not resonate with your unhappiness can interest you.

In this week I see such a picture of life, hard and joyful pressed up together and sleeping in the same bed. They come knit together. The lines of pain run through the joy and...

If you could burn calories just by crying… I would be a skinny woman.”-Casey King, Fingerlike

NOTE TO SELF – BOOMERANG EFFECTMy words, thoughts and deeds have a boomerang effect.So be-careful what you send out!

It’s alright to love someone who doesn’t love you back, as long as they’re worth you loving them. As long as they deserve it.

When I say that deciding to not kill myself was the worst part, I should clarify that I don’t mean it in a retrospective sense. From where I am now, it seems like a solid...

I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable–indescribable–my misery amazing.

Mary Lou suddenly realizes that Mack calls the temperature number because he is afraid to talk on the telephone, and by listening to a recording, he doesn’t have to reply. It’s his way of pretending...

I don’t see how anyone can find happiness in this world.

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a...

Some friends don’t understand this. They don’t understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you’re wonderful just the way 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,...

Everything was usual. That was depression: being stuck, clinging to an out-of-date version of oneself.

One of the first actions we take at Passages is to ruthlessly scrutinize, always under a doctor’s supervision and care, the specific necessity of any mind- altering or mood-altering medications that our clients are taking....

Here is the tragedy: when you are the victim of depression, not only do you feel utterly helpless and abandoned by the world, you also know that very few people can understand, or even begin...

So I got a new job, and I start tomorrow. I’m excited to have a job, and bummed out I’m going to be working.

The world isn’t perfect, and some days it wears you down. You can either accept that, and face it, and be a help to others instead of a hindrance. Or you can decide the rules...