When people call it [depression] I always get pissed off because I always think depression sounds like you just get like really sad, you get quiet and melancholy and just like sit quietly by the window sighing or just lying around. A state of not caring about anything. A kind of blue kind of peaceful state … Well this - isn’t a state. This is a feeling. I feel it all over. In my arms and legs … All over. My head, throat, butt. In my stomach. It’s all over everywhere. I don’t know what to call it. It’s like I can’t get enough outside it to call it anything. It’s like horror more than sadness. It’s more like horror. It’s like something horrible is about to happen, the most horrible thing you imagine — no, worse than you can imagine because there’s the feeling that there’s something you have to do right away to stop it but you don’t know what it is you have to do, and then it’s happening, too, the whole horrible time, it’s about to happen and also it’s happening, all at the same time. … Everything gets horrible. Everything you see gets ugly. Lurid is the word. … That’s the right word for it. And everything sounds harsh, spiny and harsh-sounding, like every sound you hear all of a sudden has teeth. And smelling like I smell bad even after I just got out of the shower. It’s like what’s the point of washing if everything smells like I need another shower. David Foster Wallace
About This Quote

Having a mental illness is like having a skin disease. Just as we all have skin, we all have minds and they need tending to as well. Imagine trying to shower and clean your skin with the same soap you use to wash your clothes. Doing so would be impossible, unless you were also washing your clothes in the shower.

It is the same with our minds. If we do not take care of them, they become ravaged by our emotions and thoughts and things that go on inside our heads that cause us pain, stress and anxiety. Soap helps clean the skin and it is the same with our minds.

Changing up what we read, listen to, watch and think about can help keep our minds clean.

Source: Infinite Jest

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