So you know how you do your best to fit in the spaces left between other people? How you don’t want to define yourself through stupid labels? Or how you want to be able to respond to those around you and not be one of those rigid assholes always trying to have everything their way? Basically, you know how you’ve sacrificed having an identity for the convenience of being flexible?

Sounds good. Keep going with that. But don’t be surprised when it fucking sucks.

Because being adaptable is a very useful skill, and yet, if you refuse to define yourself, you’ll be left confused and unfulfilled. Bending over backwards wears on the body, and you get worn out constantly molding yourself to fit other people’s needs without caring about your own.

If you’re alive, a certain amount of selfishness is a guarantee. You’ve gotta take care of feeding yourself, sheltering yourself, and sleeping yourself among other things. And beyond the basics, there’s getting yourself some sense of safety, respect, and possibly, just maybe, some affection. You may wish that you could be a completely selfless person all the time. Or that you could martyr yourself away until there’s no you left, only an amazing human accessory bent on fulfilling the needs of others. Still, these facts can not be flexed out of.

Never fear. You don’t need to give up that adaptability of yours. And it doesn’t make you weak or dumb to be accommodating. It’s a valuable skill to be able to adapt and reform yourself to fit your circumstances, and it’s one worth keeping. It’s also worth having the capability to be firm. In addition to being able to readily conform, you can also have the ability to resist when you see fit. That way you can push back on harmful influences, or let them into yourself, and then cast them away later.

So feel free to flex up to a point. And when you reach that place where you want to push back, that’s okay as well. Defining yourself does not mean giving up your flexibility. It means being able to harden and soften at will, and decide for yourself when to adapt to what’s around you and when to make what’s around you adapt.

So you know how you’ve taken the right steps to manage your depression, and just when things are starting to move forward, you fuck it all up by reverting to your old shitty habits? So in the end, you’re back where you started, or better yet, you’re even farther behind?

When you feel like you’re falling back into negative routines and the depression is creeping into your life once more, you probably are and it probably is. No worries though. Because whether you’re going forward or backward is irrelevant. It’s about where you set the starting line.

Now when you’re trying to climb out of your misery pit, you want to make sure that you set your base zero at your lowest low. Similarly, when you’re running your misery race, you want to make sure that whenever you’re depression clouds your mind, turns you around, and sends you back the way you came, you reset the starting point.

“Isn’t that cheating? How can you make progress if you reset the starting point every time you mess up?” Well fuck, when did you become so conscientious? Jokes. You’re right, it is bullshit. Then again, the point isn’t about where you started from, it’s about where you’re trying to get to, as in typically, the land of not-being-so-damn-miserable. Certainly you want to pay attention to the progress you make towards that goal. Still, if you go a different direction for a while, that doesn’t mean you went backwards, it just means you’re taking the scenic route.

And sometimes you’re not going to be heading towards recovery. Sometimes an obstacle will get in your way, and you’ll have to weave in weird ways to find yourself back on track. You may have to go the “wrong” direction, before you can go the “right” direction. Those quotes pointing out the fact that wrong and right are not really valid markers in this case. Because as long as you know where you’re heading, every step you make is towards that goal.

So if you’re walking backwards and feel like your destination is getting even more out of reach, just turn around and start going in a new direction. If you get caught up on whether you’re taking the “best” route, then you’ll get mired in your swamps of self-doubt. There isn’t one path to “better,” so when you’ve gotten turned around, reset your heading and head out.

So you know how not everyone can win a raffle? And so even when you do manage to win that pie at the county fair, it just means that millions of more deserving people out there won’t get to enjoy all that delicious cherry filling? And you don’t really deserve to have that pie because you don’t even appreciate it. Especially, since the only thing you can think of while eating the pie is how much you don’t deserve the pie, instead of feeling grateful for how awesome it is that you get to eat that pie.

That’s some meta shit right there. Anyway, spoiler alert: life is not fair. However, life is like a fair. In that there’s lots of random cool shit to do, but you won’t enjoy any of it if you’re depressed.

Sometimes things are going to happen to you that you don’t think you deserve to have happen to you. These things may be bad, like a small army of remote nanobots invading your bloodstream and detonating inside your skull. These things may be good, like a small army of remote nanobots invading your bloodsteam and then not detonating inside your skull. Still, life is not just about what you deserve, it is about the goals you set for yourself and what resources will help you meet them.

If your goal is just to survive, and you have access to food, water, and shelter: YOU WIN.  If your goal is to be the coolest person on earth, and you died by freezing to death at the bottom of the antarctic ocean: GAME OVER. But you still win. Some people have access to more resources than others, and that gives them a head start when trying to achieve their goals. And so they don’t need to work as hard to achieve the same goal as a person with less resources. However, this does not mean that they should not get to feel good about the work they do accomplish and the goals they do achieve.

This means that you can use the resources at your disposal without feeling guilt, or that you don’t deserve them. This applies to people in the past as well as the present. Just because you can use computers while Hemingway could not, that does not mean you should not feel proud of that Great American Novel you’ve been typing up. And just because you can buy paint at the local grocery store while Picasso had to give up food to afford his, that does not mean you should tear up that masterpiece of yours. Yes you may have privileges and talents that other people were not born with, and yes it is unfair that you can use them to surpass other people who may share your goals. Still, giving up on opportunities does not mean that other people are guaranteed them. And denying yourself fulfillment does not fulfill others.

So yes is unfair that you get a head start on the path to success, or that you are lucky, or this or that. Still, if it bothers you, use those resources to fulfill the goal of guaranteeing other people resources. Instead of feeling like you don’t deserve that cherry pie, eat it gratefully and know all the while that someday you will use your resources to host your own raffle where everyone wins and gets to take home their own pie of whatever flavor they want.