You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn’t a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terrible-ness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terrible-ness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better. From “The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression” by Andrew Solomon
A human being can
survive almost anything,
as long as (he) she sees
the end in sight. BUT,
depression is so insidious,
and it compounds daily,
that it’s impossible
to ever see the end.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
