On Depression

image: flickr / creative commons

He dropped the book and stood up. He had no wish to remain on that spot; he had no wish to move from it. He thought that he should go to sleep. It was much too early for him, but he could get up earlier tomorrow. He went to his bedroom, he took a shower, he put on his pyjamas.Then he opened a drawer of his dresser and saw the gun he always kept there. It was the immediate recognition, the sudden stab of interest, that made him pick it up...
     He walked to the bed and sat down, the gun hanging in his hand. A man about to die, he thought, is supposed to see his whole life in a last flash. I see nothing. But I could make myself see it. I could go over it again, by force. Let me find in it either the will to live on or the reason to end it now...

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, 1947