So you know how you’re not really depressed, you’re just pretending? Really you could snap out of your depression at any time, you just want to keep doing it because it’s…

Wait why the fuck would you do that? What on earth is worth pretending to be depressed for? Avoiding responsibilities? You can do that just as well when not depressed and be a lot happier about it. Self-control? You can do that by just leveraging the pain without any of the lethargy and anhedonia. Social isolation? That’s really easy to manage, just be a complete asshole to everybody and they’ll leave you alone sooner or later. Or you could be intentionally maintaining a depressive state of mind in order to write a blog… but that would be crazy. Ha ha. Crazy.

Yeah no really, pretending to be depressed is just being depressed. It’s comforting to think that you’re in control of your depression and could just end it at any time by “stopping pretending,” but in all likelihood if you really tried it out, it’d be more challenging than just ripping off the sad face.

Never fear. You are in control of your depression. And you could end it at any time. Or at least manage its effects. It’s just likely to be more of a process than a quick fix solution. You may need to experiment to find that special cocktail of techniques to soothe your misery wounds.

Pretending to be in pain is being in pain. Pretending to be depressed is being depressed. And just in case this hasn’t been said before: depression is real. It’s not just being sad for a while. Or intentionally self-sabotaging, though that can be part of it. It’s not a mythical mind frame that you created just because you felt like it. It’s an altered state of thinking, feeling, and being. It’s a “condition” or “status.” And it can fucking suck. It can also be fucking awesome. Just depends on what you’re looking to learn in life and what kinds of perspectives will help you see the world in a fascinating way.

So you are pretending to be depressed, and you are actually depressed. The pretending is the being. Because in case you haven’t noticed, non-depressed people don’t really invest that much time in perpetuating their unhappiness. That’s a fun little game for us miserables to play at. If you want to keep playing, do. And if you want to make believe something else, do.

So you know how fun it is to imagine scary, dangerous things happening to you? As in, how many fun ways can you imagine yourself dying today? Electrocution. Vehicular collision. Lightning. Terrorist joy. Falling on a treadmill. Choking. And so on and so forth?

Well the bad news is you could die anytime or anywhere. There are genocides and plagues and bad television programs lurking around every corner. Or at least some corners somewhere. The good news is that means that you can leave your house without fear! Or at least without any more fear than you should feel inside your house.

Since you could really die under any circumstances, it’s not so much that this or that place is a death trap, it’s a matter of trading risks. Afraid of planes? Don’t forget to be afraid of cars as well! Afraid of poisonous spiders? Why not try parasites on for size?

Ultimately, what makes you safe isn’t thinking about all of the awful things that could happen to you. Rather, it’s determining what you can prepare for versus what you can’t. And it’s knowing that you can handle this or that situation, and what steps you’d need to take in order to do so. Safety is a state of mind. Because theoretically all of existence could change dramatically tomorrow.

The goal is to find ways of reframing and alleviating each fear that occurs to you. Electrocution? Good thing you always keep appliances away from water. Vehicular collision? Jump out of the cars then watch them crash and burn! Lightning? Just keep your iPod close and let those headphones ground you. Of course you can always imagine ways that everything goes wrong despite your best efforts. The point is: keep imagining. Try to continue your nightmare narratives to a slightly less awful conclusion. For instance, instead of your story ending with you choking to death, perhaps someone notices you struggling, helps you out, and then steals your wallet. A happy ending.

So really everywhere is safe. In that theoretically things could go awfully and yet you’d be able to imagine some way to come out of it alive. It’s your fear, and your negativity, and your narratives. Even if you can’t control the outside world, you can redirect the impressions you carry of it within your own mind.

So you know how good you are at coming up with solutions to things? And you know just how to fix your depression, and then everything you need to do to become a fire-baller… something or the other? And if you could just figure out how to start in on your plans, you’d be good to go?

Planning is procrastinating solving. And sometimes, it’s very useful or important to do. Because that way you take the time to fully weigh and consider your options, and determine the best course of action. Yet while it is certainly beneficial to do some thinking before acting, when you do some preliminary thinking, and then some more thinking, and then just keep doing some thinking instead of acting, that can be a bit less productive.

But it’s so fun. To come up with awesome plans and awesome stories about how everything will be awesome. And it’s hard then, when you realize that the world is awful, and will never be as awesome as all the things you thought and planned in your head. Thing about high expectations is that you’re really just setting yourself up for a bit of a dive. And all those plans you make, can become a prison when you’re afraid to take action because it might not fit into the grand scheme. Or you realize that reality just doesn’t measure up to how you thought everything would go.

And those plans become shackles, when you can’t deviate from them. Or when the guidelines you set for yourself become the measure of your success, and those guidelines just keep shifting so that success is just out of reach. Resetting your base zero helps. Still, those plans… sticky things those plans.

When the plans conflict, or when reality sucks, your plans get derailed. Then the process could start all over again with some new plans, or you could figure out a first step and try that. Then you could figure out a second step and try that after. Not to mention you could take a look at all those things you know you’ve secretly been putting off, and either put them off less secretly, or attempt to deal with some of that shit. It is useful to have goals, and a destination in mind for where you’ll end up after managing your depression. Still, it’s helpful to recognize that the path you take to get there is not likely to be as linear as you expected from the outset.

So you can go ahead and plan and plan away. Make all the plans. Make amazing plans. And when they get all fucked because of the bullshit life likes to surprise you with, that’ll be okay. Because you’ll make new plans. And because as long as you can figure out one next step, you can keep moving forward. Anything beyond that is bonus.

So you know how being depressed sucks and yet you still want to maintain it anyway? Because you’re a pain hoarder, you fear change, or just fucking feel like it? Well you can! You can have your misery and eat it too.

Hm. That isn’t quite right. Regardless, you can keep on being miserable, and try to become not so miserable at the exact same time. This is possible because people can be more than one thing at a time, and also because misery is one of those wonderful chronic conditions that can co-exist with just about any other feeling.

You can be angry and miserable. Or happy and miserable. Or amused and miserable. There are so many mixes and matches! There is no need to get rid of your depression in order to be able to experience other conditions at the same time.

Likely you’ve already realized this. Because you’re probably dragging yourself through the motions of life, and find that you’re fully capable of experiencing other arbitrary feelings while you do so.

And even if you stop feeling miserable for a while and your depression abates, there’s no need to miss it. You can just go mess up your life and make yourself miserable all over again. Even if you were to eliminate your depression, you could always find a way to make some more of it. Undoubtedly, it would be fun to try.

So you can go ahead and grow or change or develop or do stuff ever so slightly differently. Because there’s no reason to sacrifice your pain in the process. Keep your pain. And then do whatever you want with it and everything else.

(My ghost writer’s helping me out with this one! Ha ha!)

So you know how people are always saying not to throw babies out with bathwater? As in, when you’re done with the bath, keep the baby.

When you’re having fun in your depression bath, keep having fun. When you’re done with the depression bath, try to avoid committing suicide. Because you’re the baby in this idiom.

Sometimes it’s tempting to give up. To feel like you’ve made no progress. And because it’s fun to say “FUCK IT.”

“FUCK IT. AGAIN.” And when you’re done, fucking it, go back to bathing. Since baths are so fun. And clean! Mostly. When done for that purpose. Like with normal water. Not other liquids. You get it.

Giving up is pointless. Anyone whose into existential nihilism knows that everything is pointless. Including giving up. Try everything while you’re giving up. Being bored means that there’s plenty of time to do so.

So babies… keep them in the bathwater. Until you want to take them out, dry them off, and just cuddle. BABIES!

So you know how sometimes you feel so dirty and like your entire life is a fucked up, grimy mirror that you will never be able to get clean? And you stare at your distorted image and want to break it to smithereens and buy a new one that will shine, gleam, and give you that beautiful fresh start that you’ve always dreamed of?

Prepare yourself for some really unsettling news: there’s no such thing as a fresh start. It’s a fucking myth. Your life is the sum of all the actions you have taken until now, and nothing you do will ever erase the past, leaving behind a brand new life for you to redraw.

And every time you face a reset, and you think “Ah a brand new start,” you’re setting yourself up for failure. Because inevitably your depression will kick into gear and start tearing up all the beautiful progress you’ve made on that blank slate. Then you’ll turn around and see all the blood-stained slates that you’ve already fucked up, and you’ll be overcome with the realization that you cannot escape what you’ve done.  So you’ll sink back down into that sickening pool of misery that you’ve become so used to, and are so desperate to escape.

Yeah… You will never get to start over. And really, you know that. You may hold on to that hope every single time you purge and the misery cycle restarts, but you know, you really know that it’s not going to work out. Still, that’s actually okay. Because while you can never get a fresh easel and paint yourself the perfect life, you can take the fucked up picture you have, and draw in a different direction.

You will probably need to address the stains, marks, and spatters from your past artistic pursuits. You will need to account for the mistakes you’ve made and see how you want to handle them as you attempt to paint a different picture, overlaying it on top of parts of the old one. And your canvas may be so covered in colors, that it seems impossible for you to create anything beautiful. It may seem like your life will be a mess no matter what you do. Still, it’s not about fulfilling some random ideal of what it means to have a beautiful life. It’s about taking a shitty awful life that was born from a shitty awful world, and getting it to look a little less fucked up. And honestly, if you can even just get yourself to stop painting everything the bleak black of your depression, that’s a win right there.

So you can never get a fresh start. And even if you make your life portrait look slightly less fucked up, you may never even get an attractive end product. Still, you have nothing better to do with your time than seek out ways to clean off your dirty mirror. Make the most of your misery while you can, and just keep painting. Because colors are the fucking best.

So you know how everything and everyone dies?

The end.

Jokes. Though that really is kind of the gist of existence isn’t it? No matter how awesome you are, or whether you’re the best tree of all the trees, or even if you’re a wonderous star burning bright in the sky, you will die.

And that fucking sucks.

But it’s okay. Because in the meantime you are not dead. You’re just in an incredible amount of pain! And sometimes that will make you wish you were dead. But wait, even if you died there’s no guarantee there wouldn’t be even more pain! So you’re fucked.

You’re just so fucking fucked.

You can build an empire. You can build a universe even. Yet everything you make will someday be destroyed. And so what gives anything meaning? Purpose?

If you’re a star or a universe, you’re out of luck because this blog is written largely for people. The aliens are listening in no doubt. As well as a couple of viruses, bacteria, and fungi, but really humanity or at leasts human hosts are the target audience.

And to humanity the answer is often humanity. Because connections with people may appear to weaken or darken, but they never disappear. And somewhere out there in the world there is always someone who can understand part of you if not all of you. And just knowing that is a comfort. Just knowing that is a saving grace.

And to humanity the answer is often not humanity. Because sometimes people are so disgusting and awful that you need to shut them out completely. And then you can really only listen to the rest of existence. And remember that even when humans are gone, there are still trees, stars, universes. Existence is a warm embrace. It is the constant knowledge that there is more than void.

So give up on life. Don’t give up on life. That’s all bullshit anyway. Right now you exist. And everything else exists too. And taking a moment to remember that… is very powerful indeed.

Oh right. And love. That’s kind of important too. But much more controversial.

So you know how there’s kind of a global perspective on depression? And sometimes it’s full of shitty simplifications like depressives are lazy, dumb, and exceptionally good looking? That last one might be wishful thinking.

Fuck the world. What does it fucking know anyway? All the science? Some tai chi? How to make a ceramic bowl? Yeah well, none of that matters as much when you’re depressed since the top priority is typically figuring out your depression which, happily, you are the expert on. Or gloomily as the case may be.

If you are trying to figure out how to cope with your life, and manage your mind, that’s really quite enough without letting in the world’s bullshit. Other people’s perspectives on what’s wrong can certainly be useful. Or they can certainly be incredibly, annoyingly not useful. Still, the perspective that matters is yours.

And depression can be convenient in that facilitates personal growth. When you are miserable and can only see the things about you that suck, that means you have an excellent opportunity to work on that shit and make it suck slightly less. Then you can become more awesome which will be better for you, and convince those judgmental assholes that depression makes you way cool. And good looking.

It really shouldn’t be about other people though. Because your life is about you. And your growth and your happiness or lack thereof should also be about you. And when people insert themselves into your head with their criticism and their unsought advice, they do you no favors and you can call them out on that.

So go ahead and block out the world. Take the time you need to examine yourself and your issues without everybody else getting up in your shit. And someday when you’ve got your head figured out, maybe you can choose to let some people back in. It’s your space. Figure out how you want to rent it out.

So you know how people spend all this time getting things and stuff? And yet at the end of the day they can’t enjoy any of it because they spend all their time getting more of it? And if you’re one of those people, it’s even worse because your depression makes it so that all those things don’t really mean that much to you anyway?

And that’s not all! Because having more things and such is a great way to grow fear, and fear is the tastiest fodder for depression. Om nom nom.

Accumulation is funny like that. The more things you get, the more you have to take care of, and the more you have to worry about what would happen if it was taken from you. You get addicted to your things, and afraid of losing them. Which isn’t to say you should go all Fight Club and start a nihilist revolution, as fun as it might be. Rather, finding a way to recognize what you need versus what you want will help ease that anxiety.

You need: food, water, shelter. You also kind of need: other people, sex, some modern conveniences, sex, mementos, sex, and information about stuff. Jokes. Sex is cool and all, but that amount probably goes on the “want” list. Also on that list: all the other bullshit you have.

Now, this is not to say that you should give up all your things and go live in the wilderness, though that sounds pretty interesting. The point is more that knowing what you need means that you can limit your fear of loss. If you lose the things you want, but don’t need, or if someone takes them from you, that’ll really suck. Still, you’ll be alive and can work to get it back. And reducing that fear is important to keeping your depression in check.

So go on and keep your shit. Just recognize that having more comes with with a weight that you may or may not want to carry. It comes with responsibility, and beyond that, it comes with anxiety. Find ways to mitigate that fear and you decrease the downside to the capitalist consumer culture that we all know, love, and live.

So you know how sometimes non-depressed people make you want to purchase a big foam bat and smack people lightly on the head in anger? No? Too non-violent? Well, regardless, whether you want to pinch someone or crush them, just ask yourself how you can best spread that hatred around.

Non-depressed people are really annoying when it comes to figuring out depression. They want to cheer you up. Or write you off. Or convince you that you don’t make sense. And none of these things are helpful. And often they only serve to make you feel more misunderstood and isolated.

Oh god. And the worst is when they come at you with that “you’re being over-sensitive” bullshit. Fuck. That. That’s just code for “I don’t understand why you’re upset, but I don’t really want to, and I don’t really care, so I’m just going to blame you for your own problems since that way I don’t have to make any effort to help.”

And maybe if someone took a few minutes to actually sit down, listen, and make an effort to understand your perspective, they’d find that you make a decent amount of sense. Maybe then they’d realize how overwhelming your depression is and that you’re doing your best to cope, but really need some space to fuck up, and some support when you do. Often people don’t make the effort. And so they don’t get it. Then again, that just makes the few that do all the more respectable.

Still, interacting with people who are not depressed is generally pretty useful. Because at the end of the day, they are less miserable and that’s rather curious. How do they do that? How do they not see all the fucked up shit in the world? Or if they do, how do they just go about their lives anyway? Do they need to block other people out? Can you be non-depressed without being a narcissistic, self-absorbed little fuck? These are the questions that you can try to answer through observing the non-depressed people.

So go ahead and hate on the world. It sure hates you. Most people make no effort to figure out what’s going on and help you out even though they do take the time to judge you and make you feel like shit. Still, there may be something to learn from all those happy jerks out there. And you might not want to waste too much effort beating them with foam bats. It is satisfying to be sure, but makes for tired arms.