gement | Why the world hurts so bad, or Boring is not the worst thing.

Sorry, this is long. I'd put it in a cut tag, but I know some people who don't click on cuts but need to read this.

Almost a month ago now (wow, time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' into the future), I explained to my counsellor that even when things seem to be going well, sometimes I'll just slip into massive depression. Fact of life. It's why I'm there. It plagues most of my friends to varying degrees. I do manage with medication, which has helped certain facets considerably, but this piece that's left is definitely mind, not brain.

I don't know how to fight it, or work with it, or placate it, or nurture it, or change it in any way. It's just a feeling of great howling void where my sense of self is supposed to be. (The effects are the usual litany: no motivation to work or take care of myself, sense that I have no real friends or meaningful contribution to the world, etc.)

I subscribe to the opinion that we don't keep emotional reactions around unless they do something for us, or at least used to do something for us. But what the hell does this do for me, or has this ever done for me, that could possibly seem like a payoff? In the short term, it feels horrible, and in the long term, it sends my life to hell.

She asked if, as she's been working with me for a year, she could throw out some phrases and I could see if they resonated. Okay.

"Delicious despair."

Okay, ow. That emotion is only supposed to register on angsting teenagers and people who are way too goth for their own good, right? But it FITS. It feels like a relief to hurt. A relief from what?

My twisted little superego thinks suffering is cooler than being boring. Better than being someone who's content with the status quo, because those are the sheep. The little voices in my hindbrain actually think like this. Better to be verging on suicidal depression than be a sheep. Better to take the red pill and live in hell than take the blue pill and eat prime rib.

Bullshit. This is not an either/or.

I told my mom this. She smiled, and asked if I remembered coming to her in tears when I was about eight years old... She asked what was wrong, and I asked, desperately worried, "Am I normal?"

She assured me that I would never be normal, and I calmed down.

It may bruise my ego to feel mundane, but yo, hindbrain, get a clue, the agony I am putting my life through is not worth it. And the posers are worse than the mundanes by far, so using misery as a fashion statement is not a winning strategy.