There are relatively few things that kill people that are young other than car accidents and suicide.

I had a terrible temper, after all, and though it rarely erupted, when it did it frightened me and anyone near its epicenter. It was the only crack, but a disturbing one, in the otherwise vacuum-sealed casing of my behavior.

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again.

Anybody who's had to contend with mental illness - whether it's depression, bipolar illness or severe anxiety, whatever - actually has a fair amount of resilience in the sense that they've had to deal with suffering already, personal suffering.

Suicide Note: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. -Langston Hughes

Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.

I realized that it was not that I didn’t want to go on without him. I did. It was just that I didn’t know why I wanted to go on