Mountains don't make me want to climb them, rain doesn't make me want to dance and birds don't make me want to fly. I just want to spend my life pushing wood in total oblivion, feeling just a tinge of happiness every time I win and great depression when I lose

Mountains don't make me want to climb them, rain doesn't make me want to dance and birds don't make me want to fly. I just want to spend my life pushing wood in total oblivion, feeling just a tinge of happiness every time I win and great depression when I lose.

"Depression from loneliness there is something lulling and comforting in her in the feeling of romance, in the emptiness of feelings. Reality seems endless.

Depression is being colorblind and constantly told how colorful the world is.

Reading is at the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it. It does not constitute it ... There are certain cases of spiritual depression in which reading can become a sort of curative discipline ... reintroducing a lazy mind into the life of the Spirit.

What people never understand is that depression isn't about the outside; it's about the inside. Something inside me is wrong. Sure, there are things in my life that make me feel alone, but nothing makes me feel more isolated and terrified than my own voice inside my head.

Antonin Artaud wrote on one of his drawings, "Never real and always true," and that is how depression feels. You know that it is not real, that you are someone else, and yet you know that it is absolutely true.

"She: You are just adorable. I can never forget that you helped me fight depression.

Her eyes were of different colors, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them. She was nineteen years old, or thereabouts; her exact age was unknown. Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom, but a marked depression in the bones beneath her left eye gave her features a disturbing asymmetry. Her mouth never curved into a smile. God, it seemed, had withheld that possibility, as surely as from a blind man the power of sight. He had withheld much else. Amparo was touched-by genius, by madness, by the Devil, or by a conspiracy of all these and more. She took no sacraments and appeared incapable of prayer. She had a horror of clocks and mirrors. By her own account she spoke with Angels and could hear the thoughts of animals and trees. She was passionately kind to all living things. She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever." (p.33)

This is a special kind of depression. It comes from the great burden laid on our shoulders. A depression you can't shake off, so that it is part and parcel of you all the time you go on with your military activities. This depression leads to melancholy. It's od to point to somebody young and say: there goes a sad man. That is our lot. One of the things that weighs me down most is that it's forbidden to speak of this sadness outside the limits of the army. In fact, I'm forbidden to share it with anyone. The main reason is the secrecy that surrounds everything that has to do with the military. In order to explain the depression, you have to talk about its origins, and that's prohibited, of course. Another reason is that it's almost impossible to explain the nature of this sadness to anyone who doesn't know it; the sadness will always be interpreted as something else. Within itself it's not mentioned-- It exists, but for each man separately. it is never discussed. Thus another factor comes into the picture-- loneliness. But loneliness, sadness and depression are the lot of great masses of people in this world. Well, then, What kind of God-forsaken world are we living in? It contains so much beauty, so much grandeur and nobility- but men destroy everything that is beautiful in the world. It seems, indeed, that from time immemorial we have been forgotten by the Gods.

Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I learned about these qualities during my bouts with depression. In that deadly darkness, the faculties I had always depended on collapsed. My intellect was useless; my emotions were dead; my will was impotent; my ego was shattered. But from time to time, deep in the thickets of my inner wilderness, I could sense the presence of something that knew how to stay alive even when the rest of me wanted to die. That something was my tough and tenacious soul.

"Artemis: (shocked) Why, Doctor? This is a sensitive area. For all you know I could be suffering from depression.

I love new clothes. If everyone could just wear new clothes everyday, I reckon depression wouldn't exist anymore.

"So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I've done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I'm scared they will never leave. I say that I don't want to take the drugs anymore, but I'm frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together.

I enjoy almost everything. Yet I have some restless searcher in me. Why is there not a discovery in life? Something one can lay hands on and say "This is it"? My depression is a harassed feeling. I'm looking: but that's not it - that's not it. What is it? And shall I die before I find it?

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality and my life, as I write this, is vital even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It's a precious discovery. Almost every day I feel momentary flashes of hopelessness and wonder every time whether I am slipping. For a petrifying instant here and there, a lightning-quick flash, I want a car to run me over...I hate these feelings but, but I know that they have driven me to look deeper at life, to find and cling to reasons for living, I cannot find it in me to regret entirely the course my life has taken. Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely, and sometimes against the moment's reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?

Sometimes I just think depression's one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there's so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.

Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.

In a strange way, I had fallen in love with my depression. Dr. Sterling was right about that. I loved it because I thought it was all I had. I thought depression was the part of my character that made me worthwhile. I thought so little of myself, felt that I had such scant offerings to give to the world, that the one thing that justified my existence at all was my agony.

"Falling in love is like getting hit by a truck and yet not being mortally wounded. just sick to your stomach, high one minute, low the next. Starving hungry but unable to eat. hot, cold, forever horny, full of hope and enthusiasm, with momentary depressions that wipe you out.

Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.

It is important not to suppress your feelings altogether when you are depressed. It is equally important to avoid terrible arguments or expressions of outrage. You should steer clear of emotionally damaging behavior. People forgive, but it is best not to stir things up to the point at which forgiveness is required. When you are depressed, you need the love of other people, and yet depression fosters actions that destroy that love. Depressed people often stick pins into their own life rafts. The conscious mind can intervene. One is not helpless.

Listen to the people who love you. Believe that they are worth living for even when you don't believe it. Seek out the memories depression takes away and project them into the future. Be brave; be strong; take your pills. Exercise because it's good for you even if every step weighs a thousand pounds. Eat when food itself disgusts you. Reason with yourself when you have lost your reason.