"We are all the artists of our own lives. We shape them, as best as we can, using our experience and intuition as guides. But we're also natural liars and we get things wrong. It's so easy for the internal commentary that forms how we live to become a forgery. Approached in a certain way, depression is a lie detector of last resort. By knocking you out for a while, it allows you to ditch out-of-date ideas by which you've been living and to grasp a more accurate description of the terrain.
If you can cope with the internal nuclear winter of depression and come through it without committing suicide, then, in my experience, depression can be a great friend. It says the way you've been living is unbearable, it's not for you. And it teaches you slowly how to live in a way that suits you infinitely better. If you don't listen, of course, it comes back and knocks you out even harder the next time, until you get the point."
Geyneth Lewis
Sunbathing in the Rain
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