Julie Schumacher

Depression is an illness, and no fault of the person who suffers from it

Young would-be novelists and poets believe that art is eternal. Au contraire: we are in the business of ephemera, the era of floating islands of trash, and most of the things we feel deeply and inscribe on the page will disappear.

Talking to a therapist, I thought, was like taking your clothes off and then taking your skin off, and then having the other person say, "Would you mind opening up your rib cage so that we can start?

Maybe the things she loved most weren't meant to be permanent. Maybe the fact that they existed was enough.