“Mezzo del cammin di
nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, Ché la diritta via era smarrita.”
“In the middle of the
journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood, for I had lost the right
path.”
~ Dante
“….pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those
who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish
can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be
hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.”
“I felt an immense and aching solitude. I could no longer
concentrate during those afternoon hours, which for years had been my working
time, and the act of writing itself, becoming more and more difficult and
exhausting, stalled, then finally ceased.”
“…in all of its manifestations is the touchstone of
depression—in the progress of the disease and, most likely, in its origin.”
“…depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate
restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition
intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come—not in a day, an
hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only
temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that
crushes the soul.”
“ I partook of what may be depression’s only grudging
favor—its ultimate capitulation. Even those for whom any kind of therapy is a
futile exercise can look forward to the eventual passing of the storm. If they
survive the storm itself, its fury almost always fades and then disappears.
Mysterious in its coming, mysterious in its going, the affliction runs its
course, and one finds peace.”
“…but it has been shown over and over again that if the is
dogged enough—and the support equally committed and passionate—the endangered
one can nearly always be saved. Most people in the grip of depression at its
ghastliest are, for whatever reason, in a state of unrealistic hopelessness,
torn by exaggerated ills and fatal threats that bear no resemblance to
actuality. It may require on the part of friends, lovers, family, admirers, an
almost religious devotion to persuade the sufferers of life’s worth, which is
so often in conflict with a sense of their own worthlessness, but such devotion
has prevented countless suicides.”
“… antiquity—in the tortured lament of Job, in the choruses
of Sophocles and Aeschylus—chroniclers of the human spirit have been wrestling
with a vocabulary that might give proper expression to the desolation of
melancholia.”
“For those who have dwelt in depression’s dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell’s black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as “the shining world.” There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.
“E quindi uscimmo a
riveder le stelle.”
“So we came forth,
and once again beheld the stars.”
~ Dante
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