"
In depression this faith in deliverance, in
ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes
the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come
– not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief,
one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is
hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the
decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting
from one annoying situation to another less annoying – or from
discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity – but moving
from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails,
but is attached to it wherever one goes.
"
