Reasons to Stay Alive

by Matt Haig

You can be a depressive and be happy, just as you can be a sober alcoholic.

It can affect people—millionaires, people with good hair, happily married people, people who have just landed a promotion, people who can tap dance and do card tricks and strum a guitar, people who have no noticeable pores, people who exude happiness in their status updates—who seem, from the outside, to have no reason to be miserable.

But that feeling of momentary relaxation actually triggered more panic.

You don’t have a second. You don’t have a single waking second outside of the fear. That is not an exaggeration. You crave a moment, a single second of not being terrified, but the moment never comes.

If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world than being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.