So you know how sometimes it seems like someone’s finally going to actually say something genuinely helpful to you? Like finally just give you that beautiful, clear, kind support that you’ve been dreaming of and searching for all along? And then, right at the end of that truly well-framed, cogent, heartfelt remark, comes, the… “But.”

Fuck but. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fucking fuck it. It’s amazing how people seem to think that a depressed person needs the negative qualifiers. As though an individual who spends all their fucking time thinking of everything negative about anything anyone says to them needs assistance coming up with rebuttals.

And the second, the “but” is added to the end of a sentence it invalidates everything that comes before it. Because now you’re focusing on the shit that sucks, because surprise surprise, you’re all miserable and that’s just what you do.

Sometimes you can scream at these people, or tell them politely if you’re into that sort of thing, that you find their tendency to match their positive statements with a negative qualifier to be insufferable, and really damn irritating. Other times, you can’t. Or won’t. Still, you’ll let this shit slide and thus take these types of comments as insults rather than the mixed messages they are in their heartiest of messagey hearts.

And that’s a bit of a loss. Because really if you’re going to take the statement at all, you might as well take all of it. Recognizing that the “but” part has some bullshit you don’t really need to hear and also that the part that’s meant to be supportive, has some validity to it as well. Should you do that? Hm. Can you do that? Hm. Will you do that? Hm.

So qualified bullshit is fucking stupid and such. Yup. That’s about right. Seeing if you can strip anything not awful from those statements is useful given that you’re probably going to take in the negative parts whether you want to or not. Finding ways of telling people how those statements could be rephrased or reframed into purely supportive remarks is also an idea. Then again, communication sucks.