That'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 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 WurtzelDepression is all about if you loved me you would. As in, if you loved me you would stop doing your schoolwork, stop going out drinking with your friends on a Saturday night, stop accepting starring roles in theater productions, and stop doing everything besides sitting here by my side and passing me Kleenex and aspirin while I lie and creak and cry and drown myself and you in my misery.
Elizabeth WurtzelThe measure of mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity, our attention to responsibility, our ability to plain and simple hold down a job.
Elizabeth WurtzelNothing in my life ever seemed to fade away or take its rightful place among the pantheon of experiences that constituted my eighteen years. It was all still with me, the storage space in my brain crammed with vivid memories, packed and piled like photographs and old dresses in my grandmotherโs bureau. I wasnโt just the madwoman in the attic โ I was the attic itself. The past was all over me, all under me, all inside me.
Elizabeth Wurtzel