Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression by Sally Brampton

This memoir is full of memorable quotes (and I highlighted something on almost every page), but for this post, I went back through all my highlights and chose the 3 quotes that were really impactful to me.
  1. "Life is about connection. There is nothing else." (p. 1)
  2. "The truth? The truth was that I wanted, passionately, to be dead. How do you tell your best friend that?" (p. 93) 
  3. "It is the glass wall that separates us from life, from ourselves, that is so truly frightening in depression." (p. 171)

All of these quotes are impactful, but it was number 3 that really stuck with me. It was running through my head weeks after I put down Sally's memoir. The way she captures being stuck, being separated led me to have a visceral response. This idea that someone who is depressed might be looking out from their depression, aware that they are depressed, but can do nothing to reach through the glass to others is terrifying. She captures the extreme loneliness of depression in a devastating way. You can as many people as possible on the other side of the glass and it doesn't matter. They can't reach you. They can see you. They might feel like they are reaching you. But there's this invisible barrier. This quote really stuck with me. 

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