But day after day of depression, the kind that doesn’t seem to merit carting me off to a hospital but allows me to sit here on this stoop in summer camp as if I were normal, day after day wearing down everybody who gets near me. My behavior seems, somehow, not acute enough for them to know what to do with me, though I’m just enough of a mess to be driving everyone around me crazy.
Elizabeth WurtzelThat's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal-unpleasant, but normal. Depression is an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space.
Elizabeth WurtzelLike, in high school, I was a good student and got straight As. It was very strict and you couldn't do well there unless you studied very hard, but every time there was any trouble, I was the first person they would be talking to.
Elizabeth WurtzelIts the people you are close to, the ones who love you, the ones who have seen your heart, who have touched your soul - to them, it is obvious that something is wrong or missing. Your heart and soul are missing. They feel it. It hurts them. It kills them.
Elizabeth WurtzelAge is a terrible avenger. The lessons of life give you so much to work with, but by the time you've got all this great wisdom, you don't get to be young anymore.
Elizabeth Wurtzel