The most important thing to remember about depression is this: you do not get the time back. It is not tacked on at the end of your life to make up for the disaster years. Whatever time is eaten by a depression is gone forever. The minutes that are ticking by as you experience the illness are minutes you will not know again.
Depression scares people off. It makes me laugh that it has that kind of effect.
As a writer who has struggled with depression, the question is one that has long troubled me. Should I resist treatment, on the off-chance my creative output will somehow be affected?
If you have depression, you are dramatically more likely to be sick. Now to say you don't need to treat depression because it's not a medical reality - when in fact it clearly affects your interaction with the entire world around you - is just frankly reactionary.
My parents were not professionals. They were products of the Depression.
Depression is a horrible, potentially life-threatening illness - but the lives it threatens are almost always those of the people who suffer from it.
If this depression stays with us, the loser Tuesday is going to be the winner.
Both parents worshiped individual achievement, but because of the Depression and the war, they never achieved what they wanted and deserved. So their ambition and high expectations were transferred to me.
In today's world, you would call my father mostly unaccessible. I'm not sure that isn't true of most fathers at that time. He went through the Depression. I don't know what that would have done to my psyche.
