Bryan Miller memoir, Dining in the Dark

 I grew up carrying a large, mysterious, emotional hole after the death of my father when I was three. It is evident that very young children comprehend absence but not death. The moment I held my son, the hole was filled. This sounds fabricated, but it is true.

As Winston Churchill is reported to have said: “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” At the same time, be kind to yourself. Take breaks. Divide your day into segments, tackling small, manageable tasks. Move—running, walking. Keep track of your moods. 

In a sense, depression is like the mafia. It makes threats and tries to convince you that you are incapable of accomplishing the smallest of tasks. For example, it spooked me into believing that I couldn’t write, when, in fact, I could. It might not have been Pulitzer Prize quality, and it might have taken two days of pacing around the house. Face down the mob boss!

Bryan Miller was hailed as the “most powerful restaurant critic in America” while writing for the New York Times from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. In his memoir, Dining in the Dark, he describes walking away from the high-profile job after years of wrestling with the “black bear” of his bipolar II depression, the drifting years that followed, and how he finally found solid ground—and stability.

Depressed people dread socializing. source