You are continually on guard.

You are on guard to the point of collapse every

single moment, while desperately trying to keep afloat, to breathe the air...
You don�t have a second. You don�t have a single waking second outside of the fear.
That is not an exaggeration. You crave a moment, a single second of not being
terrified, but the moment never comes. P�g 37

The bank of bad day P�g 39

Carried my virginity around like a medieval curse. :'D

� . . . once the storm is over you won�t remember how you made it through, how you
managed to survive. You won�t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really
over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won�t be the
same person who walked in. That�s what this storm�s all about.�
�Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

I stacked the days up like Jenga blocks, imagining I was making progress, and then
� crash � along would come a fivehour panic attack or a day of total apocalyptic
darkness, and those Jenga days would topple back down again. P�g 60

If you are scared when there is nothing to be scared of, eventually your brain has
to give you things. And so that classic expression � �the only thing to fear is
fear itself� � becomes a kind of meaningless taunt. Because fear is enough. It is a
monster, in fact. And, of course � �Monsters are real,� Stephen King said. �And
ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.� P�g 64

That�s the odd thing about depression and anxiety. It acts like an intense fear of
happiness, even as you yourself consciously want that happiness more than anything.
So if it catches you smiling, even fake smiling, then � well, that stuff�s just not
allowed and you know it, so here comes ten tons of counterbalance. P�g 71

So much sadness and fear to walk through.

That feeling you have, that everything is going to get worse, is just a symptom. P.
76

Nothing lasts for ever. This pain won�t last. The pain tells you it will last. Pain
lies. Ignore it. Pain is a debt paid off with time.

Minds move. Personalities shift. To quote myself, from The Humans: �Your mind is a
galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile. Which is to say,
don�t kill yourself. Even when the darkness is
total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through
that galaxy. Wait for the stars.�

You will one day experience joy that matches this pain. You will cry euphoric tears
at the Beach Boys, you will stare down at a baby�s face as she lies asleep in your
lap, you will make great friends, you will eat delicious foods you haven�t tried
yet, you will be able to look at a view from a high place and not assess the
likelihood of dying from falling. There are books you haven�t read yet that will
enrich you, films you will watch while eating extra-large buckets of popcorn, and
you will dance and laugh and have sex and go for runs by the river and have late-
night conversations and laugh until it hurts. Life is waiting for you. You might be
stuck here for a while, but the world isn�t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you
can. Life is always worth it. P. 77

Light was everything. Sunshine, windows with the blinds open. P. 87

There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I
don�t really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping.
It is not where we are, but where we want to go, and all that. P. 88

I loved external narratives for the hope they offered. Films. TV dramas. And most
of all, books.
They were, in and of themselves, reasons to stay alive. P. 89

Also, that kind of monotony that running generates � the one soundtracked by heavy
breathing and the steady rhythm of feet on pavements � became a kind of metaphor
for depression. To go on a run every day is to have a kind of battle with yourself.
Just getting out on a cold February morning gives you a sense of achievement. But
that voiceless debate you have with yourself � I want to stop! No, keep going! I
can�t, I can hardly breathe! There�s only a mile to go! I just need to lie down!
You can�t! � is the debate of depression, but on a smaller and less serious scale.
P. 100

Or was life a kind of war most people didn�t see?

But it is nice to build up, over the years, things that you know do � on occasion �
work. Weapons for the war that subsides but that can always ignite again. P. 101

There is a great article on �Lincoln�s Great Depression� in The Atlantic by Joshua

Wolf Shenk. In it, Shenk writes of how depression forced Lincoln into a deeper
understanding of life:
He insisted on acknowledging his fears. Through his late twenties and early
thirties he drove deeper and deeper into them, hovering over what, according to
Albert Camus, is the only serious question human beings have to deal with. He asked
whether he could live, whether he could face life�s misery. Finally he decided that
he must. . . He had an �irrepressible desire� to accomplish something while he
lived. P. 108

Because inside there is a golden you who loves you and wants you to win and prevail
and be happy. 133

The key is in accepting your thoughts, all of them, even the bad ones. Accept
thoughts, but don�t become them. P.51

Understand that thoughts are thoughts. If they are unreasonable, reason with them,
even if you have no reason left. You are the observer of your mind, not its victim.
P. 153

Listen to your mind. Let it do what it does without judging it. Let it go, like the
Snow Queen in
Frozen. P. 154

MI RAZ�N La posibilidad de viajar y conocer los vastos paisajes y ciudades. El

planeta en s� mismo contenedor de infinitas bellezas naturales esperando ser
exploradas, descubiertas, admiradas. La posibilidad del viaje en si mismo,
compartido con mis m�s cercanos seres queridos, es mi raz�n de vivir.