Sawdust

"It was like sawdust, the unhappiness: it infiltrated everything, everything was a problem, everything made her cry - school, homework, boyfriends, the future, the lack of future, the uncertainty of future, fear of future, fear in general - but it was so hard to say exactly what the problem was in the first place."
~ Melanie Thernstrom
The Dead Girl


That's the thing I want to make clear about depression: It's got nothing at all to do with life. In the course of life, there is sadness and pain and sorrow, all of which, in their right time and season, are normal - unpleasant, but normal. Depression is in an altogether different zone because it involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature's part (nature, after all, abhors a vacuum) to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.
I had invented the monster and now it was overtaking me. This was what I'd come to. This is what I'd be for the rest of my life."
On top of feeling sad, I also feel guilty.
The concept of white, middle-class, educated despair just never occurred to me, and listening to rock and roll all day was probably no way to discover it.
Nothing about my life seemed worthy of art or literature or even of just plain life. It seemed too stupid, too girlish, too middle-class.

~ Elizabeth Wurtzel
Prozac Nation

The Traveller's Ode

Sir Richard Burton

One of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon distant journey into unknown lands.
Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares, one feels once more happy.