Chaos And Intensity Are No Substitute For

Suicide Note: The Calm, Cool Face Of The River Asked Me For A Kiss. -langston Hughes

Grief Comes And Goes, But Depression Is Unremitting

We All Build Internal Sea Walls To Keep At Bay The Sadnesses Of Life And The Often Overwhelming Forces Within Our Minds. In Whatever Way We Do This—through Love, Work, Family, Faith, Friends, Denial, Alcohol, Drugs, Or Medication—we Build These Walls, Stone By Stone, Over A Lifetime. One Of The Most Difficult Problems Is To Construct These Barriers Of Such A Height And Strength That One Has A True Harbor, A Sanctuary Away From Crippling Turmoil And Pain, But Yet Low Enough, And Permeable Enough, To Let In Fresh Seawater That Will Fend Off The Inevitable Inclination Toward Brackishness.

In Depression, Your Capacity To Feel Just Flattens And Disappears And What You Feel Is Pain And A Kind Of Pain That You Can't Describe To Anybody. So It's An Isolating Pain, A Completely Isolating Pain.

There Is A Particular Kind Of Pain, Elation, Loneliness, And Terror Involved In This Kind Of Madness. When You're High It's Tremendous. The Ideas And Feelings Are Fast And Frequent Like Shooting Stars....but, Somewhere, This Changes. The Fast Ideas Are Far Too Fast, And There Are Far Too Many; Overwhelming Confusion Replaces Clarity. Everything Previously Moving With The Grain Is Now Against-you Are Irritable, Angry, Frightened, Uncontrollable....it Will Never End, For Madness Carves Its Own Reality.