Depressed Sad Girl Quotes

I'm the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible...

For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I’ve done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take the drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together. In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing on the page: I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship—the lending of a hand from me to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace—reminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glance of myself in a security mirror’s reflection. In that moment, my brain did an odd thing—it fired off this split-second message: “Hey! You know her! That’s a friend of yours!” And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In a flash instant of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page. Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a FRIEND… I fell asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance. In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of depression’s lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy loneliness beat it, too.

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between...I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?

Once upon a time, there was a naïve and innocent girl who thought she could tame the beast and live happily ever after. But the beast did not want to be tamed, for he was a beast and beasts care not for such things, and the girl died along with her dreams. From childhood's grave sprang a young woman, jaded before her years, who knew that beasts could wear the skins of men, and that evil could exist in sunlight, as well as darkness. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Girls are always saying things like, “I’m so unhappy that I’m going to overdose on aspirin,” but they’d be awfully surprised if they succeeded. They have no intention of dying. At the first sight of blood, they panic.

And now I was older, and the wishful props of future selves had lost their comforts. I might always feel some form of this, a depression that did not lift but grew compact and familiar, a space occupied like the sad limbo of hotel rooms.

Every morning I sit at the kitchen table over a tall glass of water swallowing pills. (So my hands won’t shake.) (So my heart won’t race.) (So my face won’t thaw.) (So my blood won’t mold.) (So the voices won’t scream.) (So I don’t reach for knives.) (So I keep out of the oven.) (So I eat every morsel.) (So the wine goes bitter.) (So I remember the laundry.) (So I remember to call.) (So I remember the name of each pill.) (So I remember the name of each sickness.) (So I keep my hands inside my hands.) (So the city won’t rattle.) (So I don’t weep on the bus.) (So I don’t wander the guardrail.) (So the flashbacks go quiet.) (So the insomnia sleeps.) (So I don’t jump at car horns.) (So I don’t jump at cat-calls.) (So I don’t jump a bridge.) (So I don’t twitch.) (So I don’t riot.) (So I don’t slit a strange man’s throat.)

She's going to be the girl bleeding in a beautiful dress until it kills her. I felt lost, sad, depressed, sick. I felt really hopeless but also like I didn't have the luxury of giving up.

I can't stand it any longer. If only I could will myself dead.

The very worst thing about being bipolar, depressed, or mentally ill in likely any way, is that any time you’re legitimately sad—any time you’re truly angry—and with good and clear reason, you will be told that you are only feeling as you are because of your illness.

Now, my dear little girl, you have come to an age when the inward life develops and when some people (and on the whole those who have most of a destiny) find that all is not a bed of roses. Among other things there will be waves of terrible sadness, which last sometimes for days; irritation, insensibility, etc., etc., which taken together form a melancholy. Now, painful as it is, this is sent to us for an enlightenment. It always passes off, and we learn about life from it, and we ought to learn a great many good things if we react on it right. (For instance, you learn how good a thing your home is, and your country, and your brothers, and you may learn to be more considerate of other people, who, you now learn, may have their inner weaknesses and sufferings, too.) Many persons take a kind of sickly delight in hugging it; and some sentimental ones may even be proud of it, as showing a fine sorrowful kind of sensibility. Such persons make a regular habit of the luxury of woe. That is the worst possible reaction on it. It is usually a sort of disease, when we get it strong, arising from the organism having generated some poison in the blood; and we mustn't submit to it an hour longer than we can help, but jump at every chance to attend to anything cheerful or comic or take part in anything active that will divert us from our mean, pining inward state of feeling. When it passes off, as I said, we know more than we did before. And we must try to make it last as short as time as possible. The worst of it often is that, while we are in it, we don't want to get out of it. We hate it, and yet we prefer staying in it—that is a part of the disease. If we find ourselves like that, we must make something ourselves to some hard work, make ourselves sweat, etc.; and that is the good way of reacting that makes of us a valuable character. The disease makes you think of yourself all the time; and the way out of it is to keep as busy as we can thinking of things and of other people—no matter what's the matter with our self.

I can't take it anymore, I can't put up with this suffering I neither understand nor know when it will end.

I want to drag knives over my skin, just so that I can feel something other than shame, but I'm not even brave enough to do that.

... Now I'll close my eyes with all my strength and fly away singing my baby girl's favorite song.

I’d felt this before, when my granddad was in the hospital before he died. We all camped out in the waiting room, eating our meals together, most of us sleeping in the chairs every night. Family from far-flung places would arrive at odd hours and we’d all stand and stretch, hug, get reacquainted, and pass the babies around. A faint, pale stream of beauty and joy flowed through the heavy sludge of fear and grief. It was kind of like those puddles of oil you see in parking lots that look ugly until the sun hits them and you see rainbows pulling together in the middle of the mess. And wasn’t that just how life usually felt—a confusing swirl of ugly and rainbow?

I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Was it Mom and Dad's fault?( Was it just temporal, a 'bad time' in my life? (When the divorce ends will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful alienting urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?

I might always feel some form of this, a depression that did not lift but grew compact and familiar, a space occupied like the sad limbo of hotel rooms.

It was really hard to stay positive. And that's normally a talent of mine.

I stare past her at the inspirational kitten posters. There's one of a soaking-wet kitten climbing out of a toilet with the caption "it could be worse!" "Just tell me whatever it is you're thinking," Mrs. Paulsen says. "Whatever is going through your mind right now." "I hope they didn't actually drop a cat in the toilet to get that picture," I choke out. "...Pardon?" "Nothing. Sorry.

In short, there has seldom been seen so depressed and sad a figure as this young girl's; and it was hardly possible to help being angry with her, from mere despair of doing anything for her comfort.

It seemed sad that it would fade or that things had to end. When he was a child, that had depressed him. When his mother read him stories, he’d bawl at the end even if the little duck found its way back to its mother or the bears and the girl became friends or green eggs and ham were eaten. It didn’t matter if the story had a happy ending or if things turned out okay and all the scary things were put away. He hated that vertiginous feeling of things ending. That sense of the world dropping off under his feet.

People think being depressed is just being tired and lazy. It isn't. It's more like being dead when you're still breathing.

I’ll be torn apart by the things they said, But it won’t kill me because I’m already dead.

When a girl is hurt, she will have a lot of people to help her out. But when the same happens to a boy, he’s always alone.

I began to picture the world without me in it.

In that moment, I thought, She’s going to be the girl bleeding in a beautiful dress until it kills her. I felt…lost, sad, depressed, sick. I felt really hopeless but also like I didn’t have the luxury of giving up. Like I was going to have to fight for her—fight for her against her—until I lost. Because there was no winning. I didn’t see how I could win the war.

I took on my depression like it was the fight of my life, wich of course, it was. I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this dispair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad's fault?) Was it just temporal, a "bad time" in my life? (When the divorce ends, will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcholisme.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that come after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it Karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?

The thing about me loving Harry is I'm twelve and he's maybe thirty or thirty-five, whatever, so he'll have to wait like six years for me to grow up. I mean if he kills Hiskott and sets us free, he'll have to wait. He'll never do that. As kind and sweet and brave as he is, he probably has a girl already a hundred others chasing after him. So what I'll have to do is always love him from afar. Unrequited love. That's what they generally call it. I'll love him forever in a deeply, deeply sad kind of way, which maybe you think sounds pretty depressing, but it isn't. Being obsessed about a deeply sad unrequited love can take your mind off the worse things, of which there are thousands, and sometimes it's better to dwell endlessly on what you can't have than on what might happen to you at any moment in Harmony corner.

I’ve seen middle grade books criticized by adult readers for leaving things for the reader to figure out, for not having perfect happily-ever-after endings. They get knocked for being too depressing, for using too many big words, for featuring parental characters who are too clueless. Girl protagonists are “too angry” or “too self-absorbed.” The issues raised are “too heavy,” the books “too earnest,” “too quiet,” “too hard,” “too far-reaching,” “too strange,” and it is all too too much for the reader. Except it’s never the readers themselves saying these things. Our critical discourse in middle grade is sometimes much more about what the reviewer believes children’s books should be rather than about engaging with the book itself and the literature as a whole. When we say a book is “too sad,” “too scary,” “too complicated;” when we demand that endings are perfectly happy and all tied up; when we demand that the themes not be too weighty or the characters not face too much hardship; we are projecting our own biases onto the book, and using them to prescribe what books for this age range can or cannot do. This is nannying, not literary criticism—and it doesn’t give kids much credit.

There were little girls who would snuggle up to any grown man and try to guide his hand inside their underwear, and there were kids who compulsively bit their own arms. Kids who would suddenly start twitching and banging their heads against a wall, not even stopping when the blood ran down their faces. Kids who waddled around oblivious to the stinking load in their own pants. Watching children like this, it was all too easy to see why their parents beat them. It was only natural to hate such kids, to ignore them and shower only your other children with love. Who wouldn't? But of course that wasn't the way it really worked. Such behaviors weren't the reasons parents abused children, but the results of abuse. Children are powerless. No matter how viciously they're beaten, children were powerless to do anything about it. Even if Mother hit them with a shoehorn or the hose of a vacuum cleaner or the handle of a kitchen knife, or strangled them or poured boiling water on them, they couldn't escape her; they couldn't even truly despise her. Children would struggle desperately to feel love for their parents. Rather than hate a parent, in fact, they'd choose to hate themselves. Love and violence became so intertwined for them that when they grew up and got into relationships, only hysteria could set their hearts at ease. Kindness, gentleness - anything along those lines just caused tension, since there was no telling when it would turn to overt hostility.

I always wanted to be a sad white girl. I wanted to be sad like Lana Del Rey. I wanted a sadness so universal, it'd move everyone to tears. A sadness everyone could related to. "I want a summertime, summertime sadness". My sadness is about domestic violence, homelessness, gender dysphoria, intergenerational trauma passed down from Salvdorean Civil War, etc, etc. My sadness is something to observe, consume, sympathize, but NOT EMPATHAZE WITH (not to mobilize for). Most people do not know how to interact with my sadness. My sadness is so multifaceted, it speaks twenty languages.

It was more when things slowed down, during the parts when you were supposed to have fun, that my lack of friends felt obvious- on Saturday nights, when there dances I didn't go to, and during visitation... I spent those times hiding. Most of the other girls propped open their doors for visitation, but we kept ours shut.

No matter how flat or sad his or her affect appears, the suicidally depressed adolescent is desperately trying to contain feelings of anger, rage, hatred, and violence. The suicide or the attempt represents the final self-destructive display of this rage. Where previously the rage may have been expressed in anti-social behaviors or directed at parents, school (the "system"), or a girl/boyfriend, now it has been turned inward. Not surprisingly, the suicide rate is much higher among runaways, teens in jail, and juvenile delinquents. Don't fear this anger! Allow the adolescent to express it; mobilize the anger rather than permitting it to remain festering inside, growing increasingly poisonous.

That's the great thing about movies, Hitch. The end is the end; everything is resolved one way or the other. You feel joyful or peaceful or relieved, or sometimes disturbed or depressed. But if it's a good ending, it satisfies you, even if it's sad. The war is over, the guy gets the girl, whatever. Real life is a whole lot messier. It doesn't end when things are at a good stopping point.

In the ad, this better version of me is sitting in her apartment watching TV, just like I am now, only her apartment is obviously much nicer than mine. For authenticity they even have a pizza box open on the table, even though this girl only eats seven almonds a week. Her world is black and white, which seems intended as a signal for depression but actually makes her look like she's in a cool French movie...

Time went by and there wasn’t even sadness. “You know how another patient put it? She said this feeling inside her was . . . it was anti-feeling. Like a black hole in space, and everything—happiness, anger, hope, meaning—it would all get sucked in, tipped over the event horizon, and she couldn’t feel any of it. That’s the way it was for me. I walked around like everyone else, and had this wonderful opportunity at the museum, and came home to this brilliant guy who loved me and was nothing but sweet. Your father tried so hard. But I felt . . . empty. If I could’ve filled that space up with anything, I would’ve. If somebody had turned to me and said, ‘It’s easy, just pour some dry cement in there and you’ll be a normal human girl,’ I would’ve done it like that.” She snaps her fingers. “But I couldn’t. And your father couldn’t do it for me.

Some mediocre ladies in influential positions are usually embarrassed by an unusual book and so prefer the old familiar stuff which doesn't embarrass them and also doesn't give the child one slight inkling of beauty and reality. This is most discouraging to a creative writer, like you, and also to a hardworking and devoted editor like me. I love most of my editor colleagues but I must confess that I get a little depressed and sad when some of their neat little items about a little girl in old Newburyport during the War of 1812 gets [sic] adopted by a Reading Circle.

What my dad did was wrong, awful, inexcusable, but maybe there's still hope for him. Maybe if he can get the help he needs, they'll be able to resurrect the man who taught me about Bach's toccata and slept in the chair in my room when I was afraid of the dark. And if there's still hope for my dad, there has to still be hope for me. Mabe it's true that he and I have the same blag slug inside of us, but it's up to me to conquer it. I owe that to my dad. I owe that to myself. [....] I make a promise to myself: /I will be stronger than my sadness./ I will do my best to become the girl from Roman's drawing. The girl with the bright eyes. The girl with hope.

I have one priority in life and it’s not making millions as it once was. I have all the money I could ever want, too much, India claims. I’m business driven but it’s my girl who is the most important part of my life. My whole life. It’s that very reason I’m reluctant to bring any shift in our happy bubble. We both work hard. We play hard together. That woman is my equal in every aspect of life. She thrills me, and intrigues me. I’ve loved peeling back India’s layers. She’s vulnerable is my mean girl and I love the place we’ve gotten to where she trusts me with all her sad, unsure moments. She will grieve for her brother for the rest of her life. She’ll always worry about her mom becoming manic depressive again. She’ll forever be a woman who puts everyone else before her own needs. But what’s different in India’s life is she now has me who makes sure she’s first. In everything. It’s going to kill me to see the happiness drop from her eyes. She’ll go into fix it mode and when she can’t, she’ll get angry and stressed.

During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got upon his feet at last and moved feebly downtown, a melancholy change had come over everything and every creature. There had been a “revival,” and everybody had “got religion,” not only the adults, but even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning. Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town was lost, forever and forever.

back. She knew she was lucky to have a job but she didn’t feel lucky. She felt depressed. Sad. Tired. And most of all, confused. She knew this was the week of Ruth Ann’s trial. There hadn’t been any press coverage yet, but she remembered the date. She had wanted to call Rick and wish him luck. In fact, she had picked up the phone several times and started to dial the number, but she just couldn’t go through with it. Not after all the things they had said to each other. She opened the back door to the office and stepped out into the night. The parking lot was barren except for her white Mustang, and the only sounds she heard were the passing of cars on Greensboro a few blocks up. She shut the door behind her, putting the key in the dead bolt and twisting it. “Kinda late for a pretty girl like you to be out.” Dawn turned to the sound of the voice, her stomach tightening into a knot. The lot was sparsely lit, and for a moment she didn’t see him. Then, standing by her Mustang, she saw a tall man dressed in khaki pants and a golf shirt. As he stepped toward her, she noticed that his hair was sandy blond and he had a patch of stubble on his face. “Can I help you?” Dawn asked, her voice shaky. She reached into her pocket for her cell phone but then remembered that the battery was dead. Damn, damn, damn. The man was in front of her now. He had continued to approach as if his appearance were completely natural.

That's the great thing about movies, Hitch. The end is the end; everything is resolved one way or the other. You feel joyful or peaceful or relieved, or sometimes disturbed or depressed. But if it's a good ending, if satisfies you, even if it's sad. The war is over, the guy gets the girl, whatever. Real life is a whole lot messier. It doesn't end when things are at a good stopping points" -Uncle Walt

Of course, I had a reputation to uphold, especially to my three best friends. Hell, I was Prince Magnum. I dropped panties left and right, and I bedded a different woman nightly. The fact that I’d been lying to by best friends about this for weeks, and literally making up fake hook-ups was depressing, not to mention sad. But I couldn’t tell them the truth. I couldn’t tell them I was hung up on some mystery girl I’d never even slept with — one who’d left me a fake name, a few pairs of panties, shampoo, and a shoe.

Once I got past grief, depression, and resignation, I needed help identifying other types of sad feelings. But unlike my exploration of anger, the thesaurus wasn’t much help this time. I added a few more words to the constellation, but I’m not sure how strongly I experience any of them. Sadness feels like a diffuse emotion, more of a background state of being than a tangible feeling. I’m rarely actively sad. I don’t burst into tears when I hear sad news. The last time I cried at a movie, I was 12. The only book that ever made me tear up was A Prayer for Owen Meany. More than once I’ve sat stoically immobile beside someone I love while they broke down. My sadness is all undercurrent, twisted up inside me, unable to escape to the surface. This, of course, makes me look cold and unfeeling. The stereotypical emotionless Aspie. The first time I confronted my muted sadness was in high school. A girl in my class, Karen, was killed in a car accident. The entire junior class attended her funeral, and everyone sobbed from beginning to end. Except me.

When she opened her eyes, Hudson was standing next to the chaise, staring at her. “Hey, you,” Morgan said, placing her hand on the side of his face with a sad smile. He looked up at her with a concerned expression, his ears plastered against his head and his tongue lizarding out of his mouth. He shifted his weight, then gently hopped up so his front paws were on the chaise next to her. Before she realized what he was doing, Hudson leaned closer to gently lick her cheek, exactly where the tear had rolled down. “Oh my God,” Morgan whispered as it dawned on her. “You’re worried about me?” Hudson continued licking her cheek no matter how she moved her face away from him. It was like he needed to distract her and wipe away any tangible traces of her sadness. “Hud, I’m okay. I’m okay,” she lied as new tears of recognition welled in her eyes. Oh my God. Hudson is a comfort dog. Their family dog, Betty, had been one, so keyed in to offering support to the humans in her house that she could practically smell tears from a room away. Betty had been particularly helpful during Morgan’s angsty teen years, seeking her out when she was feeling depressed. After realizing that Hudson meant business and wasn’t going to stop his comfort rituals, Morgan surrendered to him. She pulled him up onto the lounge, and he leaned his body against hers like a weighted blanket.

Until then, my teenage soul--suspicious of cheerfulness, though still reflexively respectful of authority--would feel increasingly uncomfortable in the presence of the official soul. The official soul, as transmitted through church and Christian paraphernalia, was upbeat, incurious, happy with its lot. It did not have any heroes other than the ones who appeared in the Bible, and it was content to hear the same stories about these people over and over again. It described pain and suffering in such a way that a person might think alcoholism or the loss of a child were no more inconvenient than a tussle with the flu: after it passed, you could stand in front of the congregation on Sunday and testify that it was all better, and God was good. As far as I could tell, that was the only story told by the official soul, and the real and true sadnesses had be excised for a more mellifluous account. Which made it seem as if there were things you couldn't talk about in church, or with people from church--what made you laugh, why you cried at a movie, what made you angry, or what books you read that hadn't been written by C.S. Lewis, A.W. Tozer, or D.L. Moody. Church was supposed to be the most important thing in life, but so much of life was left out, because so much of its trouble was assumed to be conquered. My pastor mentioned Kierkegaard in a sermon only once, and it would be a long time before I discovered that there was a storied Christian who suffered from, and so in some way sanctioned, depression, rage, sarcasm, and despair--the diseases that took hold in adolescence, for which church offered no cure.

Jade was sad, she was depressed, she was hurt and more than anything, she missed her baby girl.

Luke Sheppard, bold and brash with wispy curls, football-built shoulders, and that squinty-eyed smile. Oh, any of us could’ve told her to stay away from him. She wouldn’t have listened, of course. What did the church mothers know anyway? Not how Luke held her hand while they slept or played with her hair when they cuddled or how after she’d told him about the pregnancy test, he cradled her bare feet in his lap. A man who laced his fingers through yours all night and held your feet when you were sad had to love you, at least a little bit. Besides, what did a bunch of old ladies know? We would’ve told her that all together, we got centuries on her. If we laid all our lives toes to heel, we were born before the Depression, the Civil War, even America itself. In all that living, we have known men. Oh girl, we have known littlebit love. That littlebit of honey left in an empty jar that traps the sweetness in your mouth long enough to mask your hunger. We have run tongues over teeth to savor that last littlebit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more. —

Unfortunately, it is not widely known that the symptoms of depression in teenagers are rarely the same as the symptoms in adults. Instead of being sad and gloomy, depressed teens are more likely to be highly irritable with most people, most of the time.

Finding joy in the mundanity of daily life takes practice. 

I think about his drawing of me. That girl he drew, she was beautiful. That girl wasn't a gray sky. She had hope. Hope is beautiful.

There are few things in this world that truly make us content. There’s a difference between happy and content, did ya know?" I shook my head, having never given the idea much thought. "Happy is what you are when you buy yourself a new hat, when you look on something grand for the first time, when a lad surprises his girl with roses. But content is different entirely. A content person feels that all is right with the world even when tragedy strikes, even when loss weighs the spirit down. They’re still at ease within themselves no matter what calamity breaks their heart. Do you see? " I did. I nodded, though I wasn’t quite sure where all this was going. "Just so, a person can be depressed or sad. The depressed person feels the blow of some misfortune---loss of a job, a pet dies, a car accident. With time depression goes away. But the sad one..." He shakes his head leveling his gaze on me. "The sad one allows misfortune to darken the spirit, to smother any hope left inside. The sad one doesn’t live long." "What do you mean? You can’t die from sadness." "Even if the body’s breathin’, that don’t mean you’re livin’, lass.

Dear Darkness, I am in a dark room, and the moon is nowhere in sight. I knew it was going to leave me again. Well, I guess it is not fair for me to assume. A little while ago, it was traveling side-by-side with me. The moon is my best friend. Maybe it is sad and looking for me too. It feels good to know someone cares. I hope the moon feels my energy and knows that I am okay—for now anyways. I have faith that I will see it tomorrow. This room is depressing. The girls here are afraid. I feel them staring at me. My hands are shivering, and I am cold. My fingers begin to feel like icicles. Once again, I will not rest tonight. I have so much on my mind. I wish someone would tell me it would be alright. I wish someone would tell me that I am not alone. The walls in this small room are closing in on me. It is hard for me to breathe. I am too young, but who cares. I am just another nobody that they never see. Just when I was losing the will to fight. I reached in my pocket—I cannot see what I am pulling out, but I would know the texture of a dandelion anywhere. Dear dandelion, you and the moon are my family. I am making a wish for you to keep Kace safe from harm. I know nobody will ever tell me this, but please let Kace know everything will be alright and that I am with him, and he is not alone. Thank you. Good night moon. Good night dandelion. All is well within my soul because I know you two are here.

To those I spoke with whiteness can be associated with isolation, dissections, and disconnections. Amanda: Well, my first husband was half-Irish and I lived with his family . . . So I got to see how they raised their children and I’ve been in prison and was raised with white girls there too. So I got to see a lot of pictures from poor whites to affluent whites. So I’ve seen that there is a disconnection. I mean, feelings are covered. Michael: One of the ways of sustaining cultural whiteness is isolation, like old Descartes. It’s not a plot, just the resonance of bad ideas. Isolate the individual rather than see the individual as the contributor back to the collective. And the carpool lane is empty and there are four lanes filled with one person in each car and that’s white culture pouring down the road, each isolated inside and hearing the news that reinforces the ideas of isolation and whiteness. Cayce: And white people for the most part have kind of isolated themselves . . . there is like a boundary around white people that a lot of times people of color drop when they are together and white people don’t always drop when they are with other white people. There’s not this sense of community. I would love to say that the above characterizations do not reflect my life, family, white friends, and their families. Unfortunately, there is a lot of it that seems right on. True, on some level these descriptions might reflect the general trend toward decreased social engagement.10 Yet over the past decade, I have spent a lot more time around people from different cultural and racial backgrounds. I am very sad to say that this sense of white people as being less emotionally connected, more isolated, and more guarded even when we are with other people resonates. The pain that comes with admitting this is all the more intense because this is something that I have known deep down for quite some time. The patterns are so ingrained that serious effort is required to break out of habits that keep me alone when in pain and nervous about sharing difficulty with family and friends. I wish that this did not characterize a broader struggle. Unfortunately, there are too many white people who exemplify these characteristics. The significant numbers of whites who seriously battle depression and a sense of aloneness in the midst of seemingly comfortable lives and intact, loving families are too great. It bears repeating that, of course, white people are not the only ones who face these issues. But that does not mean that it is not a pattern characteristic of white people worthy of honest investigation.

She deserved to have something named after her, that's how special she was. If, for example, sadness had roots attached to a person's heart, they should carry her name. The roots of self-destruction named after a girl with a chest full of soil incapable of growing a seed.

What my dad did was wrong, awful, inexcusable, but maybe there's still hope for him. Maybe if he can get the help he needs, they'll be able to resurrect the man who taught me about Bach's toccata and slept in the chair in my room when I was afraid of the dark. And if there's still hope for my dad, there has to still be hope for me. Mabe it's true that he and I have the same black slug inside of us, but it's up to me to conquer it. I owe that to my dad. I owe that to myself. [....] I make a promise to myself: /I will be stronger than my sadness./ I will do my best to become the girl from Roman's drawing. The girl with the bright eyes. The girl with hope.

Oh, any of us could’ve told her to stay away from him. She wouldn’t have listened, of course. What did the church mothers know anyway? Not how Luke held her hand while they slept or played with her hair when they cuddled or how after she’d told him about the pregnancy test, he cradled her bare feet in his lap. A man who laced his fingers through yours all night and held your feet when you were sad had to love you, at least a little bit. Besides, what did a bunch of old ladies know? We would’ve told her that all together, we got centuries on her. If we laid all our lives toes to heel, we were born before the Depression, the Civil War, even America itself. In all that living, we have known men. Oh girl, we have known littlebit love. That littlebit of honey left in an empty jar that traps the sweetness in your mouth long enough to mask your hunger. We have run tongues over teeth to savor that last littlebit as long as we could, and in all our living, nothing has starved us more.