Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.

The stigma of self-inflicted death is for some people a hateful blot that demands erasure at all costs.

What this country needs... what this great land of ours needs is something to happen to it. Something ferocious and tragic, like what happened to Jericho or the cities of the plain - something terrible I mean, son, so that when the people have been through hellfire and the crucible, and have suffered agony enough and grief, they’ll be people again, human beings, not a bunch of smug contented cows rooting at the trough.

Depression...so mysteriously painful and elusive.

We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.