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Somehow, like so many people who get depressed, we felt our depressions were more complicated and existentially based than they actually were.
I was beginning to tire of all the opportunities to build character at the expense of peace, predictability, and a normal life.
There is an assumption, in attaching Puritan concepts such as “successful” and “unsuccessful” to the awful, final act of suicide, that those who “fail” at killing themselves not only are weak, but incompetent, incapable even of getting their dying quite right.
It was a loopy but intense life: marvelous, ghastly, dreadful, indescribably difficult, gloriously and unexpectedly easy, complicated, great fun, and a no-exit nightmare.
Because manic-depressive illness had brought such misery and uncertainty in its wake, I presumed life should therefore be kinder to me in other, more balancing ways. But then I also had believed that I could fly through starfields and slide along the rings of Saturn.
But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a very strong medicine.
People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief:
