When you're depressed, there's no calendar. There are no dates, there's no day, there's no night, there's no seconds, there's no minutes, there's nothing. You're just existing in this cold, murky, ever-heavy atmosphere, like they put you inside a vial of mercury.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates the sense of timelessness and heaviness that comes with depression.
Rod Steiger's quote conveys the profound experience of depression as a state where time loses its meaning and everything feels burdensome. In this dense atmosphere, the individual feels trapped in a cold and murky existence devoid of structure, making it challenging to escape the overwhelming feelings of despair.
In practice
In a speech addressing mental health awareness, this quote can be used to illustrate the isolating feeling of depression.
You know how most illnesses have symptoms you can recognize? Like fever, upset stomach, chills, whatever. Well, with manic depression, it's sexual promiscuity, excessive spending, and substance abuse - and that just sounds like a fantastic weekend in Vegas to me!
I had really bad obsessive-compulsive disorder. At its worst, I was compelled to leave my house at three o'clock in the morning and go out in the alley because I just knew that the paper-towel roll I threw in the recycling bin was uncomfortable, like it was lying the wrong way, and I would be down in the garbage.
How come every other organ in your body can get sick and you get sympathy, except the brain?
I never felt like that before. Maybe it could be depression, like you get. I can understand how you suffer now when you're depressed; I always thought you liked it and I thought you could have snapped yourself out any time, if not alone then my means of the mood organ. But when you get that depressed you don't care. Apathy, because you've lose a sense of worth. It doesn't matter whether you feel better because you have no worth.
People are always selling the idea that people with mental illness are suffering. I think madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better.
I wasn't creative when I was depressed. When my depression got treated, I was creative again.
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