Undercurrents Quotes

“Depression is such a cruel punishment. There are no fevers, no rashes, no blood tests to send people scurrying in concern, just the slow erosion of self, as insidious as cancer. And like cancer, it is essentially a solitary experience; a room in hell with only your name on the door”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“There is no getting away from a wave that has got your name on it. The tide will come in whether you want it to or not. And there really is not a damn thing you can do to stop it, reverse it, or even delay it. Forget it. You have to plant your feet solidly in the sand and get yourself anchored. And then you have to be ready to take some direct hits from the water. You loosen your body and move with each wave. You get salt in your nose and mouth, and the ocean racks sand and stones over your feet and legs. Your eyes sting, and you feel so tired. But there is really nothing else to do. The tide will come and go. The sun will be warm again, and the salt on your skin will remind you of what you have done. And you will rest your tired body on the shore, falling into that delicious sleep that comes from knowing you are right.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“When you're depressed, everyone has an opinion about what you should do. People seem to think that not only are you depressed, you are also stupid.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“Just hold me, sit with me, put your arm around me. Listen as I struggle to tell you what it feels like, without thinking you have to tie it all up in some cohesive clinical bundle. I don't expect you to make this better. I know you can't.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“I didn’t want to die because I hated myself; I wanted to die because I loved myself enough to want this pain to end.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“In the psychological literature, depression is often seen as a defense against sadness. But I'll take sadness any day. There is no contest. Sadness carries identification. You know where it's been and you know where it's headed. Depression carries no papers. It enters your country unannounced and uninvited. Its origins are unknown, but its destination always dead-ends in you.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“All the romantic nonsense about depression somehow making one into a creature of unique sensibilities is easy to agree with when I feel good. Then I'm sharper, superior for having weathered something terribly difficult, or just plain pleased to having been gotten away with something once again - like the snow day after the night's homework I did not do. All of it stands up to the light, but it's bullshit in the shadows. I do not care about unique sensibilities. All I care about is surviving. My goal in life is to get through the days.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“In the middle of a night, hunched over my computer, with the rest of the house dark and quiet, I feel a certain moral superiority to the sleeping world.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“I look at other people and think, "He lives without meds. She does. What is wrong with me? Am I so biochemically screwed up, so neurotic, so narcissistically self-absorbed that every hour is an obstacle course for me?”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“Suffer from depression." That's right. It is suffering. A person does not just have depression. She suffers from it.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“For so long now I have waited to get back to baseline and I have to go to exactly the same point from which I originally set out on these travels. My criterion for healing was to be able to go right where I left off, like midpage in a novel. I have aited and waited, but I'm still not back to that page. Kay and Lew try to tell me, in their own gentle ways, to stop waiting. I think they're trying to tell me that i'm never going to get that page. That I'm in an entirely new book now, most of it unwritten”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“My depression points to my not knowing how to lose - I have perhaps been unable to find a valid compensation for the loss. It follows that any loss entails the loss of my being - and of Being itself. The depressed person is a radical, sullen atheist.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“She reports the breakup of the relationship as if she is presenting a case in court - all facts, no feeling. I lean forward in my chair and comment softly, “How painful that must have been for you.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“I cried to her, "Why did this have to happen? Why?" I expected some plausible and complicated medical explanation. She shrugged and said gently, "Because, Martha, it was just your turn.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“But I keep going because I've learned over the past few months that as bad as things seem, they can always get worse.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“He throws a quick arm around me and quotes a line we've always loved from The New Hampshire Hotel, "Keep passing the open windows.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface

“Call someone 'a schizophrenic' or 'a borderline' [and it] lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers.”
― Martha Manning, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface