I used to think depression and mental illness was a bunch of crap. Thats until Ive had the experience of my dads bipolar disorder. I heard this quote earlier today in relation to depression on Robin Williams passing. Perfectly describes things if you ask me. David Foster Wallace quote: The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesnt do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that lifes assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fires flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. Its not desiring the fall; its terror of the flames. Yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. Youd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 15:55:04 +0000
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