So you know how sometimes you’ve tried all the things, and still ended up right back at the starting line? And you’re trying to win your little life race, but it seems like the course is all uphill, and so frozen over that you just keep on sliding down to the bottom? And how even when you finally manage to make some progress, you look around and realize that you’ve just been running in circles?

Thing is, running in circles is pretty helpful when you’re racing on a track. If you end up back where you started, good job, you’ve got another lap under your belt. Was that lap so different from the one before it? Probably not. Do you feel like you’ve made a ton of progress in completing it? That’s hard to say.

What you can say is that every time you run a lap, your count goes up. You use more energy, you get more tired, and you also learn more, and get stronger. You get a better feel for the circuit, and can even find places where the path diverges.

Running in circles is just how life works.  Go somewhere and return. Wake up and go to sleep. Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall. Or something. Routines are a series of cycles. And sometimes that’s comforting. Because you know what comes next. And sometimes that’s damaging. Because your cycles involve self-destructive patterns of behavior. And sometimes, it’s just plain fucking boring.

Circles are great and all. Still, sometimes you want new circles or different circles. You want to break out of one track, and start running on another. That’s cool. Whether you run laps on one track or another, you’re still racking up the count, and growing all the while.

So complete those circuits, and circle up as many times as you like. Running in circles does not mean that you’re not making progress. As you finish each lap, you get a clearer perspective on the course. And if you want to change the course, well okay. Find a new circle, and keep going.

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.

So you know when sometimes you think that everyone else around you is screwed up, but you’re fine? And then you think that you’re screwed up, but everyone else around you is fine? And then you kind of don’t know what the fuck’s going on and all you want is for everyone, including you, to just be fine?

Bad news is that everyone is fucked up. Good news is that sometimes you’re not as fucked up as everyone else. Bad news again is, if the people around you are fucked up, and you’re not making any efforts to deal with that, or you are doing your best but those efforts are not succeeding, then you’re probably on the way to becoming more fucked up yourself.

While you chow down on that bad news sandwich, consider the term “co-dependent.” If you’re spending your time trying to help other people who so absorbed in their own shit that they can’t even see that you too have feelings, needs, troubles, thoughts, and a separate identity, then you’re sacrificing yourself. That’s noble and all if you’re doing it for some greater purpose. Thing is that if you’re doing it to achieve some goal, and that goal isn’t being achieved, then you might want to take another look at your methods.

Done with the sandwich? Good, back to the point. Being around damaged, hurt, or pained people can make you damaged, hurt, or pained. When you’re connected to others, you both send and receive thoughts, feelings, or just pure information. When the people you’re connected to are sending you negative information, it doesn’t matter what you’re sending back, you’re still going to receive that negative shit. It’s good to be connected to people, and it’s good that you’re trying to help other people by giving them healing messages. It’s not good if in the process you take in more and more of the other person’s hurtful messages, because this compromises you’re ability to resist the depression yourself.

If your goal is to get more depressed, then hey, good job. Keep on trucking. On the other hand, if your goal is to actually help the people around you who are struggling, you’d better work on finding a way to make sure that you don’t get more fucked up in the process. You will not be able to help anyone if you lose all feeling in your emotion limbs and are forced to amputate parts of your heart. Skipping the rainbow bullshit, you will not be able to fix anything if you’ve lost sight of what you were trying to fix and why you felt motivated to try and fix it.

So yeah, maybe you’re not the truly messed up one, and you’re just in bad company. Still, whether or not it’s you who has all the problems, or everyone else who has all the problems, you need to pay some attention to your shit. Because while you may or may not be the one with issues, or baggage, or significant damage, if you don’t find ways of keeping your shit straight, and keeping other people’s shit from becoming yours, then you’ll start racking up hit points like no other. Meaning, you’ll get fucked up, and be useless when it comes to helping anyone or anything at all.

So you know how since everyone is unique and different, that means that no one can ever truly understand another person? And how you’re just so complicated that it’s frustrating when people pretend to get you? And especially, when they think that means they get to tell you how to deal with shit?

There’s kind of nothing more irritating than you telling someone that you’re depressed and them coming back with some “well everyone feels that way sometimes” or “you’re not alone” bullshit. Fuck that. Why would knowing that other people feel fucked up about similar shit make you feel any less fucked up about your shit? Because then you get to be “normal” or something? Why would it make you feel good to know that feeling like shit is the norm?

That being said, don’t be surprised if someone out there does get what you’re going through. There are people who are good listeners, and will actually hear you out in order to understand you. There are people who are magical empathizers, and can just sit next to you and get it. And there are people who have had similar shit happen to them, and have been depressed. The thing about all of these people is that they don’t need to say shit like “hey man I get what you’re going through,” or “it happens to the best of us,” because they actually do get what you’re going through, and know that when people say that shit, it’s really annoying. These people don’t get everything. Still, they do agree with you on some shit, and that’s something.

Now you may not have run into those people. Or you may have met people who aren’t quite there yet, and kind of get how to be supportive, but it’s hit or miss. Still, even if someone gets a sloppy understanding of what you’re saying, that’s valuable because it means they will know what things they do that are unhelpful, and maybe even what is helpful. You may not want to put in the effort to try and be understood, or you may even get a kick out of people not being able to figure you out. And that’s fine. But then don’t be surprised when they say annoying shit and go around glowing, thinking they’ve helped the poor depressive see the light.

Understanding is hard to get, but once you got it, you get to keep it forever. It may slip your mind, and you may think you’ve forgotten it, but you never do. And similarly, when other people come to understand you, that never goes away. Once someone recognizes your perspective, they will never be able to completely ignore it again. They may try to block it out, and may even succeed in the short term. Still, they will be changed. And it’s worth trying to get people to get what you’re going through, because then they will learn to stop hurting you, and start helping. And they will take that knowledge with them as they interact with more people who are depressed or have had similar challenges.

So yeah it’s really tiring to try to understand people or to try to be understood. And most of the time it seems like you get nowhere, and it’s not worth the effort. Still, when you get through- when you get the message across, and finally are heard, it means that you’ve really had an impact. And knowing that you have the ability to shape your surroundings even a little bit, makes all that trying worthwhile. So whether you’re the one trying to misunderstand someone, or trying to be misunderstood yourself, just keep going.

So you know how you’ve tried the watermelon-only cleanse, taken up step-aerobic yoga, quit your job, cut off that friend who smells weird, signed up for cooking classes with your cat, started a new job, tried wearing a starfish on top of your head, spoken with a video game guru, and quit your new job? Yet somehow, nothing you do seems to help resolve your depression in the long term?

If the present seems to be perfect, first off, think again because it’s probably not, and second, recognize that maybe something in the past is still having an effect on you. It sucks to realize that you’re one of those people who can’t get over some dumb childhood trauma, or high school nightmare, but what sucks even more is not being able to figure out what the hell is causing your present day difficulties.

Everyone has things in their past that have had an adverse effect on them. Many people resolve those issues on the spot, by somehow expressing their anger, sadness, pain, or whatever else. However, sometimes people can’t express those negative emotions when they first occur. If you’re depressed, you could be someone who had something shitty happen at a time before you knew how to handle it, and how to channel your feelings in a way that would allow for healing to happen.

Maybe you were scared to deal with your feelings. Or maybe you even wanted to protect the person who was hurting you. Or maybe you always meant to address something, and then so much time passed that you feel like you should “let it go” or “just forget about it.”  Or maybe you think that you are a rock, not a person, and so you should not have any feelings to deal with. Or maybe you want to be stoic, and just keep that pain inside for the rest of eternity. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe…

Fuck all that. Who cares about why you were not able to deal with your shit in the past? The question is: how are you going to deal with it now? You may not be able to stop bad things that have already happened, but you can change them. Not through time travel. At least not yet. You can change the past by changing the present. Instead of being someone who cannot forget his or her time as a teen ugly duckling, find a way to address that remaining pain and become that self-aware swan you always dreamed of. And rather than becoming that maladjusted adult with a fucked up childhood, work to heal the hurt and be a redeemed wise-man who transcended a difficult youth.

So yeah you can’t actually change the past. That was a lie. For now… Still, by reframing your personal narrative you can change the impact your past has had on you. Find that past pain, and resolve it in the present. Then you’re life story doesn’t have to end in the early chapters. It can be a full book of angst and joy. Repression and release. Damnation and redemption. And kittens. Don’t forget the kittens.

So you know how people have done some really awful shit to you? Accidentally and/or intentionally. And how try as you might to just let it all go, in the end you’re still really fucking miserable about it? And no matter what, somehow you just can’t seem to forget?

Good. Don’t forget. People who have done bad shit to you might do it again, and it’s valuable to be able to remind them of the fact that they’ve pulled the same asshole stunts in the past. If nothing else, when you remember how a person caused you pain, you can better defend yourself against it in the future, by adjusting your expectations, or whatever other methods work.

That being said fuming and festering about your painful experiences is unhealthy. You end up holding in your anger and sadness to the detriment of your own well being. Or you end up exploding and causing hurt to yourself or others. Or so on and so on. Thing is: not forgiving really only hurts you. Because you’re stuck with the burden of your pain. So forgiving is probably a healthy thing to do. But hey, you’re depressed. So sometimes doing what’s healthy isn’t your forte. No matter what, whether or not you decide to work on forgiving someone is always entirely your choice.

That being said, fuck forgetting. “Trying to forget” something is impossible, because whenever you “try,” you just end up remembering it. Not to mention that when people tell you to “just forget about something,” It’s typically because they don’t respect you enough to see your perspective and understand why you’re experiencing pain in the first place. See how they feel the next time they’re pissed or hurt and you say “just let it go.”  No. If someone let you down- If someone hurt you- If someone made you angry- then they should take responsibility for that.

Now the world isn’t perfect. In fact it’s awful. So sometimes people won’t take responsibility. Maybe they are so involved in their own bullshit they can’t even see what they did. Maybe they don’t know how to take responsibility for anything. Maybe they try, but they really suck at it. Maybe you can’t even express to them what it was that fucked you up. Maybe they don’t even remember, which really fucking sucks. And maybe they’re dead, which sucks even more. Unfortunately, you cannot force another person to take responsibility for something. You can point out where they lapsed, and how they can make it up, but it’s they who decides whether or not to respond appropriately. And that too, fucking sucks.

So you can go ahead and remember how much that all sucks. You can go ahead and remember how irresponsible that person is. Or remember that you need to be careful around them. Or remember that you want to act a certain way in reaction.  You can use those memories to inspire change. Or you can just hold on to them as a reminder of how sometimes life is really hard. Point is, you don’t need to “just forget about it.” Respecting what you remember, and understanding the reason why, is all a part of respecting yourself.

So you know how much fun it is to play the pain game? Like when we look at other people and think how much better or worse we have it when compared to them? And when we win we also lose because either we have more pain and that sucks, or we have less pain and therefore less right to feel justified in our misery?

Pain is not really quantifiable, and therefore setting up inequalities seems a rather fruitless enterprise. There’s no way to measure how a negative experience will affect one person versus another, let alone the impact of different types of experiences. Comparing pain just isn’t possible.

But of course, we still do it all the time. We want justification for our unhappiness. We want to feel like we deserve to be unhappy. That we’ve earned it. And so this means looking at other people for cues. If that person is unhappy because of this, then certainly I’m allowed to feel unhappy because of that. Or if I am able to cope with this event, then why can’t that person? Why are they making such a big deal of their pain when I’m doing everything in my power to minimize the damage and keep it out of sight?

And so we become invested in other people being hurt. We can feel good when we know they are more damaged than us. Or feel bad because they are coping with something so much better. We judge and judge and judge some more. Deciding when people have a right to behave in a certain way and when they are “over-reacting” or “milking it” or “being melodramatic” or “just doing it for the attention.” And all the while we ignore that all that bullshit is irrelevant, because that person is in pain so the only thing that matters is how they can find a way to heal.

Really, we should not need to play games with our pain. Because we know how it feels when people are measuring themselves based off of us, and when they are comparing our pain in order to judge us. And it fucking sucks. When people assume that they have had similar experiences that they have “handled better” and so they somehow have the right to tell us how to deal with things. Pain is not something that requires any justification, we can just feel it when we feel it, and handle it however we choose to handle it.

So pain is not a worthwhile investment. We can’t win or lose at the pain game, because it just sucks for everyone. Instead of spending our time trying to be better or worse at suffering, we could spend that effort working in tandem to heal each other’s hurts. And rather than splashing about in our separate misery puddles, we could seek to soak them up together.

So you know how people fuck you over again and again? And how sometimes there’s nothing you can do to stop it, but at least afterwards you can get high off your own anger and resentment? How everyone makes such a big deal about forgiving, but ultimately it can just feel so good to hold on to the hurt?

Damn it’s so sickeningly sweet. Saturating yourself in feelings of being “justified” and bathing in your puddles of pain and misery. It can be delicious. It can be addictive.

And in the end, it can be utterly useless and detrimental. Because holding onto to the pain damages exactly one person: you. Well maybe a couple of other people too if your hurt ends up happening all over everyone around you. It’s not like the person you’re angry at is affected by your pain. Even if you choose to exact some sort of revenge, the pain you cause them is just new pain, not a direct extension of your own. People can hurt other people, but everyone experiences hurt on their own and in their own way. Nothing you do will ever cause a person to “feel your pain” because it’s only yours.

That being said, hurting other people can have an impact on your own experience of your pain. Sometimes it makes it worse because you may feel guilty or ashamed, and sometimes it relieves it because you may get a sort of release from victimizing others.  It’s worth knowing that while strategies that cause further pain to others may allow for that short term release of your pain, they don’t resolve it, so the pain will just keep returning. Ultimately, everyone finds their own strategies for managing pain. The question is whether or not you will choose to seek out strategies that help you to deal with the hurt and truly move on. Because it is a choice to heal, and while not everyone chooses in their best interests, you can.

That is where the whole forgiveness thing comes in. Because at its heart, forgiving isn’t forgetting about what people do, or accepting what they do, or even understanding what they do. Forgiving is about finding ways to release your pain. It is when you look at another person, and realize that while you were not responsible for the hurt they caused, you get to choose whether or not you want to try to release it without causing any further harm to yourself or others. Forgiving is recognizing that while other people are responsible for the damage, you are still the one who has to deal with the mess, so you might as well clean it up in addition to whatever else you decide to do. Because you can forgive and still choose to dislike someone, or want to hurt someone, or to not understand someone, or to not accept someone.

So forgiveness is for your own sake. It’s for you to be able to heal, and so fuck whatever caused the pain in the first place. It doesn’t mean there are no scars. It doesn’t mean that you let go of everything and just forget about what happened. It does mean you get to find your own way of moving forward.