When you're depressed, there's no calendar. There are no dates, there's no day, there's no night, there's no seconds, there's no minutes, there's nothing. You're just existing in this cold, murky, ever-heavy atmosphere, like they put you inside a vial of mercury.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the sense of timelessness and heaviness that comes with depression.
Rod Steiger's quote conveys the profound experience of depression as a state where time loses its meaning and everything feels burdensome. In this dense atmosphere, the individual feels trapped in a cold and murky existence devoid of structure, making it challenging to escape the overwhelming feelings of despair.
In practice
In a speech addressing mental health awareness, this quote can be used to illustrate the isolating feeling of depression.
One of the manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will. And I thereby lose my ability to focus. I don't think I'll ever have the day-to-day consistency in my performance that something like This American Life has. If I'm not depressed and I'm on and I can focus and I can think through something hard and without interruption and without existential emptiness that comes from depression, that gives me - not mania. But I exalt. I exalt in not being depressed.
There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, 'There now, hang on, you'll get over it.' Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
When public figures remain silent about depression, there is a cost to the rest of society. Silence contributes to the misperception that successful people do not get depressed, and it keeps the public from seeing that treatment allows many individuals to return to competitive professional lives.
When I believe, I am crazy. When I don’t believe, _x000D_ I suffer psychotic depression.
Getting help for substance abuse can be reduced to the deceptively simple focus of ‘keeping away from the dope.’ But what does getting help with depression mean? Learning to keep away from your own mind?
Depression isn't just being a bit sad. It's feeling nothing. It's not wanting to be alive anymore.
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