Quotes About Struggle

Given that, it turned out to be unnervingly easy to keep my friends and family at psychological bay: "To be sure," wrote Hugo Wolf, "I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds.

before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion; I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous.

Patient reluctant to be with people when depressed because she feels her depression is such an intolerable burden on others";

my curiosity and temperament had taken me to places I was not really able to handle emotionally

We have given sorrow many words, but a passion for life few.

Mental exhaustion had taken a long, terrible toll, but, strangely, it was only in feeling well, energetic, and high-spirited again that I had any true sense of the toll taken.

As a child I had been quiet and invisible when troubled; as an adult, I had hidden my mental illness behind an elaborate construction of laughter and work and dissembling.

There is no easy way to tell other people that you have manic-depressive illness; if there is, I haven't found it.

No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one's dark moods.

manic-depressive illness, we proposed to the executive director of the Philharmonic a program based on the lives and music of several composers who had suffered from the illness, including Robert Schumann, Hector Berlioz, and Hugo Wolf.

freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.

knew better than to assume a straight shot at happiness: If we see a light at the end of the tunnel, he said, it's the light of an oncoming train.

Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it; an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.

Then, suddenly, I was unpredictably and uncontrollably irrational and destructive. This was not something that could be overcome by protocol or etiquette. God, conspicuously, was nowhere to be found.

Others would say to me, It is only temporary, it will pass, you will get over it, but of course they had no idea how I felt, although they were certain that they did. Over and over and over I would say to myself, If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?

I remain acutely and painfully aware of how difficult it is to control or understand such behaviors, much less explain them to others. I have, in my psychotic, seizure-like attacks—my black, agitated manias—destroyed things I cherish, pushed to the utter edge people I love, and survived to think I could never recover from the shame.

Manic-depression is a disease that both kills and gives life. Fire, by its nature, both creates and destroys.

Eventually, the depression went away of its own accord, but only long enough for it to regroup and mobilize for the next attack.

This was not why I had gotten a Ph.D., and I was beginning to understand Bob Dylans lines "Twenty years of schoolin' and they put you on the day shift." Only it was twenty-three years, and I was still pulling a lot of night shift as well.

Two other patients were waiting for their doctors, which only added to my sense of indignity and embarrassment at finding myself with the roles reversed--character building, no doubt, but I was beginning to tire or all the opportunities to build character at the expense of peace, predictability, and a normal life.

Reading, which had been at the heart of my intellectual and emotional existence, was suddenly beyond my grasp. I was used to reading three or four books a week; now it was impossible. I did not read a serious work of literature or nonfiction, cover to cover, for more than ten years. The frustration and pain of this were immeasurable.

The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast you first must make it beautiful. In some strange way, I have tried to do that with manic-depressive illness. It has been a fascinating, albeit deadly, enemy and companion: I have found it to be seductively complicated, a distillation both of what is finest in our natures, and of what is most dangerous. In order to contend with it, I first had to know it in all of its moods and infinite disguises, understand its real and imagined powers.

My thinking, far from being clearer than a crystal, was tortuous. I would read the same passage over and over again only to realize that I had no memory at all for what I had just read. Each book or poem I picked up was the same way. Incomprehensible. Nothing made sense.

I have no idea how I managed to pass as normal in school, except that other people are generally caught up in their own lives and seldom notice despair in others if those despairing make an effort to disguise the pain.