Chapter 4: All the Way Down
“I understand why some depressed people kill themselves: they need the rest. But I do not understand why others are able to find new life in the midst of a living death, though I am one of them.”
Two lessons
1. It is important to speak one’s truth to a depressed person.
2. Depression demands that we reject simplistic answers, both “religious” and “scientific”, and learn to embrace mystery, something our culture resists.”
“Depression is the ultimate state of disconnection, not just between people but between one’s mind and one’s feelings, between people, between mind and heart, between one’s self-image and public mask.”
“True self is true friend. One ignores or rejects such friendship only at one’s peril.”
“I now know that to be whole means to reject none of it but to embrace all of it.”