There is a longing for spiritual closeness just as there is a longing for an emotional bonding to another human being. But it is a form of longing, of human need, that I spent years ignoring. I’ve written here about longings arising from depression and inner devastation, emptiness and loss. Those longings tend to break […]
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Depression Against Life
Anon for Now recently commented on the sense of renewal in life that served as a deterrent to suicide. This struck me as capturing the most baffling aspect of the temptation to end life. For what does the evidence of life on earth point to but the endlessly inventive will to survive? There is no […]
Acting, Depression and Work
I was reading Joyce Carol Oates’ novel, Blonde, about the life of Marilyn Monroe, and was stopped by a line spoken by the character known as the “The Survivor.” Norma, he said, was a natural actor because she didn’t know who she was and so was driven to try to become the character completely. That […]
Fighting Depression: Why Get Well?
Recently, I’ve started asking myself a basic question: Why get well? What do I really want in fighting depression? After all, if I’m working on recovery, I ought to be able to see what I’m aiming for. I thought for a long time that what I wanted was to be free of depression. That would […]
Explanations – 1: Finding a Guide
I’d like to think of the search for the causes and treatments of depression as the tracking down of a killer, a good yarn like the fascinating medical mystery stories The New Yorker publishes from time to time. But we’re a long way from the end of such a story, and those tales can only […]
