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

The awareness of the damage done by severe mental illness—to the individual himself and to others—and fears that it may return again play a decisive role in many suicides

Everyone has good cause for suicide, or at least it seems that way to those who search for it. (74)

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

Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.

Manic depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live.

The complexities of what we are given in life are vast and beyond comprehension.