Life is filled with sorrows. No matter what we do, we will in the end die. We are, each of us, held in the solitude of an autonomous body. Time passes and what has been will never be again.

Depression is a birth and a death: it is the new presence of something and the total disappearance of something. Birth and death are gradual, but the birth and death constituting depression occur at once. When depression strikes, the first thing that goes away is happiness. You cannot gain pleasure from anything and soon other emotions follow. You lose the ability to trust anyone, to be touched, to grieve. eventually, you are simply absent from yourself.

Rebuilding of the self in and after depression requires love, insight, work, and, most of all, time. Depression exists as a personal and a social phenomenon, and to treat it, one must understand the experience of a breakdown, how medications work, and the most common forms of talking therapy.

Excerpt from “The Noonday Demon”- Andrew Solomon