Gilman

The misery is doubtless as physical as a toothache, but a brain, of its own nature, gropes for reasons for its misery. Feeling the sensation fear, the mind suggests every possible calamity: the sensation shame, remorse and one remembers every mistake and misdeed of a lifetime, and grovels to the earth in abasement. I, the ceaselessly industrious, could do no work of any kind. I was so weak that the knife and fork sank from my hands too tired to eat. I could not read nor write nor paint nor sew nor talk nor listen to talking, nor anything...I went to bed crying, woke in the night crying, sat on the edge of the bed in the morning and cried from sheer continuous pain. Not physical, the doctors examined me and found nothing the matter. The only physical pain I ever knew, besides dentistry and one sore finger, was having the baby, and I would rather have had a baby every week than suffer as I suffered in my mind. A constant dragging weariness miles below zero. Absolute incapacity. Absolute misery. To the spirit it was as if one were an armless, leg-less, eyeless, voiceless cripple. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman