Martha Manning Quotes

• Depression is such a cruel punishment. There are no fevers, no rashes, no blood tests to send people scurrying in concern. Just the slow erosion of the self, as insidious as any cancer. And, like cancer, it is essentially a solitary experience. A room in hell with only your name on the door.

  Martha Manning

  Cancer, Erosion, Doors

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• People say, "I have heart disease," not "I am heart disease." Somehow the presumption of a person's individuality is not compromised by those diagnostic labels. All the labels tell us is that the person has a specific challenge with which he or she struggles in a highly diverse life. But call someone "a schizophrenic" or "a borderline" and the shorthand has a way of closing the chapter on the person. It reduces a multifaceted human being to a diagnosis and lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers.

  Martha Manning

  Struggle, Heart, Justice

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• In the psychological literature, depression is often seen as a defense against sadness. But I'll take sadness any day. There is no contest. Sadness carries identification. You know where it's been and you know where it's headed. Depression carries no papers. It enters your country unannounced and uninvited. Its origins are unknown, but its destination always dead-ends in you.

  Martha Manning

  Country, Sadness, Defense

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• I would never kill myself intentionally. I couldn't do that to my family, my friends ... But to have fate step in and give me a shove, that's a different matter. Then I have the exit, without the guilt. I am ashamed of myself for thinking like this. But more than anything, I am frightened that it makes me feel so much better to think about it. Sometimes it eases the terror, the sense that I am condemned eternally to this hell.

  Martha Manning

  Suicidal, Fate, Thinking

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• The bottom line is that my life has already almost slipped away from me. I have two choices: I can end it or I can fight like hell to save it.

  Martha Manning

  Fighting, Two, Choices

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• Cada vez se me da peor fingir. Mi familia se da cuenta y me pregunta qué me pasa. Mis amigos me invitan a hablar, a llorar. Les quiero por su cariño, pero quiero huir de ello. He perdido su lenguaje, su facilidad con las palabras que transmiten sentimientos. Estoy en un territorio nuevo y me siento como una extranjera en el suyo.

  Martha Manning

  Depression, Running, Caring

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• If only I had known a year ago what I'd be facing now. Until last year I lived with the innocent arrogance that my life was a simple product of effort, will, and design. But now I am a house of cards, held precariously by the fragile conspiracy of wind, weight, and angle. Perhaps it is best we cannot see into our futures.

  Martha Manning

  Simple, Years, Wind

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• In these flashes of insight, I understand for a moment that one of the great dividends of darkness is an increased sensitivity to the light.

  Martha Manning

  Light, Darkness, Moments

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• La infinidad de este vacío, el dolor omnipresente, el anhelo de algo de espíritu, algo de ligereza, algo de alegría, eso es todo lo que queda.

  Martha Manning

  Pain, Joy, Vacancy

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• Las imágenes son visuales, auditivas, olfativas, cinestésicas. No se asientan sobre las mismas pistas que el pensamiento. Y a veces, cuando vuelven a ti, es como si las sintieras por primera vez. La memoria vive en los detalles, como el color de una habitación, el tono de una voz, el tacto de un niño, el olor de un hombre.

  Martha Manning

  Niños, Recuerdos, Hombres

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• The body remembers what your mind forgets.

  Martha Manning

  Mind, Body, Remember

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• Psychologists call it "free-floating" anxiety. What contradictory words. Anxiety doesn't free-float. It stalks. It attacks. It lands on you with a thud.

  Martha Manning

  Land, Anxiety, Floating

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• I should come with a consumer warning, like the labels that say "Handle with care" or "May be hazardous to your health." I am unfit for human consumption. I struggle to articulate how awful and isolating this feels, but I can't find the words.

  Martha Manning

  Struggle, Labels, Warning

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• Some struggles are so solitary that they drown in words.

  Martha Manning

  Struggle, Solitary

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• It's enough just to speak when spoken to, to give some minimal reaction to a stimulus. But to actually be the stimulus doesn't even occur to me.

  Martha Manning

  Depression, Giving, Speak

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• Sometimes hell has no words.

  Martha Manning

  Sometimes, Hell

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• I always feel bad laughing at people who act crazy. But sometimes the things they do are so damned funny. I wonder what I'd look like if I slipped a few notches on the mental-health index.

  Martha Manning

  Depresión, Locura, Gente

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