Anyone who suggests that coming back from suicidal despair is a straightforward journey has never taken it.

the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to believe once i was better, that the illness was one i should willingly give up....moods are such an essential part of the substance of life, of one's notion of oneself, that even psychotic extremes in mood and behavior somehow can be seen as temporary, even understandable reactions to what life has dealt....even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.

An ardent temperament makes one very vulnerable to dreamkillers.

People are more impulsive and they get slightly less impulsive as they get older and the impulsiveness interacting with the depression is particularly devastating and lethal, potentially lethal.

We all move uneasily within our restraints.

Never once, during any of my bouts of depression, had I been inclined or able to pick up a telephone and ask a friend for help. It wasn't in me.

I had been simply treating water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in seeking out life.