Reasons to Stay Alive

by Matt Haig

DOUBTS ARE LIKE swallows. They follow each other and swarm together.

To say how I was feeling would lead to feeling more of what I was feeling. To act normal would be to feel a bit more normal. I acted normal.

You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human for having depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident.

Where talk exists, so does hope.

All we can do, for the moment, is really all we need to do—listen to ourselves. When we are trying to get better, the only truth that matters is what works for us.

Things aren’t going to get worse. You want to kill yourself. That is as low as it gets. There is only upward from here.

“Your mind is a galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile. Which is to say, don’t kill yourself. Even when the darkness is total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through that galaxy. Wait for the stars.”

You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.

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.

Love is an attitude to life. It can save us.

Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person. You can walk through a storm and feel the wind but you know you are not the wind.

Kurt Vonnegut was right. “Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found.”

Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.