False Advertising
I wonder if I made a mistake when I described this blog as a journal of depression and suicide. It started out that way, but gradually it became peppered (if not flooded) with self-indulgent fantasies, inapposite memoirs, self-referential blather, personal opinions, immature preaching, irrational defensiveness, narrow-minded cynicism, and more. Maybe I should asterisk this blog's description with the aforementioned "features."
I still feel depressed. I know I'm repeating myself, but I'm probably going to say that about a million more times over the next few weeks. I think I've said that before.
I had a bag of cheese puffs for breakfast. So wonderfully nutritious. I felt slightly nauseous afterward.
I've almost always felt depressed. Sometimes I wonder how a person can possibly withstand his or her life with so much sadness, especially if the person has no supports. In my case, I really don't know. What comes to mind is that I'm forcing myself to live despite all this misery. It seems that the best end for any person forced to suffer through such a life is to be put out of his misery. Why was I born? I never asked to be born. I was brought into this world. Why must I suffer so?
Saturday, February 14, 2004
"Is't Possible?"
I remember one time in high school where we had to act. I'm the type of person who couldn't act if my life depended on it, so I was understandably nervous. Our teacher split our class up into twos. Then he assigned random passages in literature to each pair for us to act out. I was paired up with a kid named T.P. whom I didn't particularly like very much. If we could choose our partners instead of having them assigned to us, I would definitely have not picked him. He was brash and rowdy, whereas I was quiet and reserved. We were like oil and water. He pretty much ignored me, even though we were in the same class for the entire year. When we were paired together, I was pretty surprised that he was very nice to me. I always assumed as far back as I can remember that any individual who ignored me didn't want to have anything to do with me. So I expected him to be disgusted and very annoyed that he had to work with me. I felt a little better that this wasn't the case.
The passage assigned to us was an excerpt from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Personally, I hate reading Shakespeare. But since so many people revere him, I decided that I just lacked the ability to appreciate his work. It's like those Magic Eye stereograms. Either you have the ability to see them, or you don't.
Anyway, the selected scene only involved two characters. I was to play one of them, and T.P. would play the other. When I first read my lines, I wondered how the hell I was going to perform this on stage. I couldn't read anything from Shakespeare, much less act it. The words resembled English, but I could never understand their meaning. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to adjust my acting according to the text. I.e., if I was supposed to look puzzled, I had no idea when to do that based on reading the text; if I was supposed to sound angry, I also had no idea; and so on.
So I found the whole assignment incredibly difficult. I had to force myself to memorize lines that I couldn't understand. I worked very hard -- in the days leading up to the performance, I practiced in front of a mirror many times. The only line I can clearly remember to this day was, "Is't possible?" Everything else was nearly impossible for me to memorize, but this line was the simplest of all. I also remembered it because it sounded like a pretty weird but funny thing to say.
T.P. and I never actually practiced together beforehand. That was a pretty important thing not to do, but I never asked him to practice with me because I was still terrified of him. Even though he was nice to me, I felt our personalities were so dissonant that it would have been very uncomfortable if we did practice together.
Predictably, our performance was a disaster. To begin with, being on stage made me feel nervous. For the initial part of our performance, we recited our lines well enough. So far so good. Later, however, everything got messed up somehow. I don't know if it was because he skipped a line, or I forgot a line, but our act became totally out of sync. Not only did I feel so embarrassed, but also I was scared that T.P. would get really pissed off at me. I was so confused that at one point, I just said the line, "Is't possible?" out of the fucking blue. I was positive I said that line at the wrong time. Luckily, T.P. was very understanding, and he wasn't pissed at me at all. The funniest thing was that we actually ended up okay. Despite the fact that the conversation we acted out sounded like absolute nonsense, we never broke down at any point during our hopeless attempt to act. I think in the end, this impressed our teacher the most. He knew that we recited our lines completely out of sequence, yet since we didn't break down and never gave up, he decided to give us a B. I was expecting an F.
Afterwards, I was relieved that it was all over. Unfortunately, T.P. and I never spoke to each other again. It's not because he didn't like me. During the time we worked together, he always treated me with respect and understanding. I think he knew that it would have been impossible for us to get along, so we just went our separate ways. The sad part was that I ended up wasting my time by being afraid of him. If I hadn't been afraid, we would have ended up exactly the same way, but I would have spared myself the unnecessary torture and terror.
The Un-Confidence Game
I have to tell the following story -- it opened my eyes about the true meaning of confidence.
During my stay in college, I usually spent weekends with the boys at a very popular bar on campus. One weekend, one of my buddies invited a friend, G.C., from his home town to join us. They came from the same high school. G.C. was only 16 and was still in high school, but he had a fake id. He was a short, skinny guy who looked like a dork and was an obvious 16 year-old, but the bouncers checked his id and let him in anyway. My buddies and I were all either 19 or 20 years old at the time, so we needed fake id's as well. However, we at least looked like we were over 21.
We came into the bar pretty late -- about half an hour before closing time. The bar was still packed, though, and there were still lots of sweet honeys around. My buddies and I really didn't do much -- we just ordered drinks and checked out the scene. The first thing G.C. did, however, was to get himself plastered. After all, a 16 year-old having unfettered access to alcohol doesn't happen every day. But being a 16 year-old, he was also intensely horny.
He looked around and saw a group of hot chicks sitting by themselves. There were no guys around. Showing absolutely no fear, he just sat right down at their table without even knowing them. We couldn't make out what he was saying, but he obviously looked like he was hitting on them. I wished I knew what he was saying. What surprised me, even to this day, was that after a while, one of the chicks actually let him make out with her. It lasted at least five minutes. This girl was incredibly hot. She had long, straight, brown hair and a perfect body. She looked to be around 19 years old. The moment I witnessed this escapade, I was extremely shocked and painfully jealous. If I got to make out with a hot 19 year-old chick when I was 16, I would have cum in my pants right then and there.
By this time the bar was closing. One of the bartenders actually had to break them apart physically. After we left the bar, G.C. didn't follow the girls. I think what happened was that these chicks went to the bar earlier, but they weren't interested in any of the guys that were there. They hung around just in case some cute guys did come along. I guess that by the time G.C. shamelessly inserted himself among them, they were too drunk and bored from sitting around the entire time without anything happening that one of the chicks just let G.C. get some action from her so that the night wouldn't have been a complete waste of time. When the bar was closing, she realized she just made out with a 16 year-old dork and got the fuck away from him as fast as possible. I was still persistently jealous because the damage was done -- even though the chick would have nothing to do with him afterwards, G.C. got more action that night than I've had in a lifetime. I learned the lesson that if you want to score, having confidence is more important than avoiding stupidity.
I remember one time in high school where we had to act. I'm the type of person who couldn't act if my life depended on it, so I was understandably nervous. Our teacher split our class up into twos. Then he assigned random passages in literature to each pair for us to act out. I was paired up with a kid named T.P. whom I didn't particularly like very much. If we could choose our partners instead of having them assigned to us, I would definitely have not picked him. He was brash and rowdy, whereas I was quiet and reserved. We were like oil and water. He pretty much ignored me, even though we were in the same class for the entire year. When we were paired together, I was pretty surprised that he was very nice to me. I always assumed as far back as I can remember that any individual who ignored me didn't want to have anything to do with me. So I expected him to be disgusted and very annoyed that he had to work with me. I felt a little better that this wasn't the case.
The passage assigned to us was an excerpt from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Personally, I hate reading Shakespeare. But since so many people revere him, I decided that I just lacked the ability to appreciate his work. It's like those Magic Eye stereograms. Either you have the ability to see them, or you don't.
Anyway, the selected scene only involved two characters. I was to play one of them, and T.P. would play the other. When I first read my lines, I wondered how the hell I was going to perform this on stage. I couldn't read anything from Shakespeare, much less act it. The words resembled English, but I could never understand their meaning. Therefore, I wouldn't be able to adjust my acting according to the text. I.e., if I was supposed to look puzzled, I had no idea when to do that based on reading the text; if I was supposed to sound angry, I also had no idea; and so on.
So I found the whole assignment incredibly difficult. I had to force myself to memorize lines that I couldn't understand. I worked very hard -- in the days leading up to the performance, I practiced in front of a mirror many times. The only line I can clearly remember to this day was, "Is't possible?" Everything else was nearly impossible for me to memorize, but this line was the simplest of all. I also remembered it because it sounded like a pretty weird but funny thing to say.
T.P. and I never actually practiced together beforehand. That was a pretty important thing not to do, but I never asked him to practice with me because I was still terrified of him. Even though he was nice to me, I felt our personalities were so dissonant that it would have been very uncomfortable if we did practice together.
Predictably, our performance was a disaster. To begin with, being on stage made me feel nervous. For the initial part of our performance, we recited our lines well enough. So far so good. Later, however, everything got messed up somehow. I don't know if it was because he skipped a line, or I forgot a line, but our act became totally out of sync. Not only did I feel so embarrassed, but also I was scared that T.P. would get really pissed off at me. I was so confused that at one point, I just said the line, "Is't possible?" out of the fucking blue. I was positive I said that line at the wrong time. Luckily, T.P. was very understanding, and he wasn't pissed at me at all. The funniest thing was that we actually ended up okay. Despite the fact that the conversation we acted out sounded like absolute nonsense, we never broke down at any point during our hopeless attempt to act. I think in the end, this impressed our teacher the most. He knew that we recited our lines completely out of sequence, yet since we didn't break down and never gave up, he decided to give us a B. I was expecting an F.
Afterwards, I was relieved that it was all over. Unfortunately, T.P. and I never spoke to each other again. It's not because he didn't like me. During the time we worked together, he always treated me with respect and understanding. I think he knew that it would have been impossible for us to get along, so we just went our separate ways. The sad part was that I ended up wasting my time by being afraid of him. If I hadn't been afraid, we would have ended up exactly the same way, but I would have spared myself the unnecessary torture and terror.
The Un-Confidence Game
I have to tell the following story -- it opened my eyes about the true meaning of confidence.
During my stay in college, I usually spent weekends with the boys at a very popular bar on campus. One weekend, one of my buddies invited a friend, G.C., from his home town to join us. They came from the same high school. G.C. was only 16 and was still in high school, but he had a fake id. He was a short, skinny guy who looked like a dork and was an obvious 16 year-old, but the bouncers checked his id and let him in anyway. My buddies and I were all either 19 or 20 years old at the time, so we needed fake id's as well. However, we at least looked like we were over 21.
We came into the bar pretty late -- about half an hour before closing time. The bar was still packed, though, and there were still lots of sweet honeys around. My buddies and I really didn't do much -- we just ordered drinks and checked out the scene. The first thing G.C. did, however, was to get himself plastered. After all, a 16 year-old having unfettered access to alcohol doesn't happen every day. But being a 16 year-old, he was also intensely horny.
He looked around and saw a group of hot chicks sitting by themselves. There were no guys around. Showing absolutely no fear, he just sat right down at their table without even knowing them. We couldn't make out what he was saying, but he obviously looked like he was hitting on them. I wished I knew what he was saying. What surprised me, even to this day, was that after a while, one of the chicks actually let him make out with her. It lasted at least five minutes. This girl was incredibly hot. She had long, straight, brown hair and a perfect body. She looked to be around 19 years old. The moment I witnessed this escapade, I was extremely shocked and painfully jealous. If I got to make out with a hot 19 year-old chick when I was 16, I would have cum in my pants right then and there.
By this time the bar was closing. One of the bartenders actually had to break them apart physically. After we left the bar, G.C. didn't follow the girls. I think what happened was that these chicks went to the bar earlier, but they weren't interested in any of the guys that were there. They hung around just in case some cute guys did come along. I guess that by the time G.C. shamelessly inserted himself among them, they were too drunk and bored from sitting around the entire time without anything happening that one of the chicks just let G.C. get some action from her so that the night wouldn't have been a complete waste of time. When the bar was closing, she realized she just made out with a 16 year-old dork and got the fuck away from him as fast as possible. I was still persistently jealous because the damage was done -- even though the chick would have nothing to do with him afterwards, G.C. got more action that night than I've had in a lifetime. I learned the lesson that if you want to score, having confidence is more important than avoiding stupidity.
Friday, February 13, 2004
De-structive Criticism
I’m feeling very depressed again today, in spite of feeling better earlier this week. Someone called me a crybaby today. Oh well. My natural instinct is to feel hurt, as I thought all human beings would. But I'm supposed to tell myself things like, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me," or, "Words can't bring me down," from Christina Aguilera.
I actually received more negative responses than positive. I guess I should have expected as much from the Internet if I write this kind of stuff. Maybe this resulted from writing the other things that had nothing to do with depression. I only wanted to have the freedom to express myself, whether it had to do with depression or not. Actually, there is a connection: individuals who do not get to express themselves freely may react in many ways, including becoming depressed. It just amazes me how callous and insensitive people can be to a genuinely depressed person like me. Sure, I believe in free speech and freedom of expression as much as the next guy. People should be able to say whatever they want. To me, however, this just gives more evidence in favor of the assertion I made earlier that human beings are intrinsically evil. How is it at all possible, given this experience, to believe that humans are good at all?
Unconstructive criticism is an interesting phenomenon. It's the easiest and simplest thing for a person to say. It requires no thought; he or she is only revealing his natural reaction to whatever he is criticizing. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the least helpful form of feedback to the one being criticized. It takes much more thought and effort instead to sit a person down and say something supportive like, "Listen, I know you're proud of what you've written, but you should know that it might cause some people to think of you as a crybaby. If instead you did such-and-such, people will be less apt to think that. Or, if you told yourself so-and-so, you wouldn't feel as bad about yourself."
Alternatively, I could tell myself that I shouldn't care about what other people think. However, what if the other person's criticism is accurate? Wouldn't it help me in that instance to pay attention to the criticism? For example, let's say that someone tells me that I'm a worthless, good-for-nothing piece of shit. If this were in fact true, wouldn't it be to my advantage to listen to him? Shouldn't it motivate me to perform actions that would make me a more productive member of society (assuming that I know what those actions are, since the person criticizing me is not inclined to reveal them)? Suppose, however, that this person's criticism was false. Instead, the person criticizing me made a poor judgment, because I know for a fact that I already am a productive person. In that case, it would not be to my advantage to listen to him.
So the important question becomes, am I a productive member of society or not? Since the answer to this question is subjective, this causes a dilemma. Should I just ignore him if I really am a productive member of society? Or, should I listen to him because I'm a productive member of society, but I need to be more productive? What if I don't know how to be more productive, since the person criticizing me isn't telling me? What if he doesn't know how? What if all he knows is that I'm worthless, and he's implying that I should take it upon myself to do exhaustive research on precisely how to be more productive? What if I fail to find any such information? Wouldn't it be logical, then, to conclude that I really am a worthless, good-for-nothing piece of shit? Since it is impossible to know the answers to these questions beforehand, the best possible response is that I should care about what other people think. In the case that the person's criticisms are accurate, if I listen to him, I would be motivated to improve myself. If I don't listen to him, I would be missing an opportunity to learn something that would improve myself. In the case that the person's criticisms are false, I can simply ignore them.
Maybe what would help me most is to stop considering myself a member of Homo sapiens. Sure, I share the same body parts, but the similarity ends there. My brain operates on an entirely different frequency than everyone else. I think differently, I act differently, I make decisions differently, I see the world differently, I have different interests, I have different values, I have different ideas, I have different goals, I have different priorities, and so on. I don't belong on this goddamn planet. I'm like one of those radio stations at the end of the dial that no one listens to. It's the best radio station to me, but not to anyone else. Since no one else listens to it, it gets low ratings. When a radio station gets low ratings, it shuts down. It goes off the air and out of business because its operating costs exceed the revenue generated. My operating costs glaringly exceed the satisfaction and happiness generated. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that it's time for me to shut down, go off the air, and go out of business for the last time.
Oh well... If expressing my feelings means being a crybaby, so be it. I should look on the bright side. If people say it to me often enough, I'll just get used to it, and it'll no longer bother me. I hope so.
I’m feeling very depressed again today, in spite of feeling better earlier this week. Someone called me a crybaby today. Oh well. My natural instinct is to feel hurt, as I thought all human beings would. But I'm supposed to tell myself things like, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me," or, "Words can't bring me down," from Christina Aguilera.
I actually received more negative responses than positive. I guess I should have expected as much from the Internet if I write this kind of stuff. Maybe this resulted from writing the other things that had nothing to do with depression. I only wanted to have the freedom to express myself, whether it had to do with depression or not. Actually, there is a connection: individuals who do not get to express themselves freely may react in many ways, including becoming depressed. It just amazes me how callous and insensitive people can be to a genuinely depressed person like me. Sure, I believe in free speech and freedom of expression as much as the next guy. People should be able to say whatever they want. To me, however, this just gives more evidence in favor of the assertion I made earlier that human beings are intrinsically evil. How is it at all possible, given this experience, to believe that humans are good at all?
Unconstructive criticism is an interesting phenomenon. It's the easiest and simplest thing for a person to say. It requires no thought; he or she is only revealing his natural reaction to whatever he is criticizing. Unfortunately, it also happens to be the least helpful form of feedback to the one being criticized. It takes much more thought and effort instead to sit a person down and say something supportive like, "Listen, I know you're proud of what you've written, but you should know that it might cause some people to think of you as a crybaby. If instead you did such-and-such, people will be less apt to think that. Or, if you told yourself so-and-so, you wouldn't feel as bad about yourself."
Alternatively, I could tell myself that I shouldn't care about what other people think. However, what if the other person's criticism is accurate? Wouldn't it help me in that instance to pay attention to the criticism? For example, let's say that someone tells me that I'm a worthless, good-for-nothing piece of shit. If this were in fact true, wouldn't it be to my advantage to listen to him? Shouldn't it motivate me to perform actions that would make me a more productive member of society (assuming that I know what those actions are, since the person criticizing me is not inclined to reveal them)? Suppose, however, that this person's criticism was false. Instead, the person criticizing me made a poor judgment, because I know for a fact that I already am a productive person. In that case, it would not be to my advantage to listen to him.
So the important question becomes, am I a productive member of society or not? Since the answer to this question is subjective, this causes a dilemma. Should I just ignore him if I really am a productive member of society? Or, should I listen to him because I'm a productive member of society, but I need to be more productive? What if I don't know how to be more productive, since the person criticizing me isn't telling me? What if he doesn't know how? What if all he knows is that I'm worthless, and he's implying that I should take it upon myself to do exhaustive research on precisely how to be more productive? What if I fail to find any such information? Wouldn't it be logical, then, to conclude that I really am a worthless, good-for-nothing piece of shit? Since it is impossible to know the answers to these questions beforehand, the best possible response is that I should care about what other people think. In the case that the person's criticisms are accurate, if I listen to him, I would be motivated to improve myself. If I don't listen to him, I would be missing an opportunity to learn something that would improve myself. In the case that the person's criticisms are false, I can simply ignore them.
Maybe what would help me most is to stop considering myself a member of Homo sapiens. Sure, I share the same body parts, but the similarity ends there. My brain operates on an entirely different frequency than everyone else. I think differently, I act differently, I make decisions differently, I see the world differently, I have different interests, I have different values, I have different ideas, I have different goals, I have different priorities, and so on. I don't belong on this goddamn planet. I'm like one of those radio stations at the end of the dial that no one listens to. It's the best radio station to me, but not to anyone else. Since no one else listens to it, it gets low ratings. When a radio station gets low ratings, it shuts down. It goes off the air and out of business because its operating costs exceed the revenue generated. My operating costs glaringly exceed the satisfaction and happiness generated. Therefore, the logical conclusion is that it's time for me to shut down, go off the air, and go out of business for the last time.
Oh well... If expressing my feelings means being a crybaby, so be it. I should look on the bright side. If people say it to me often enough, I'll just get used to it, and it'll no longer bother me. I hope so.
Mind Games
An event that occurred last Monday caused me to rethink my attitude toward life. I imagined having to play in a basketball game. My team consisted of normal, everyday guys who had no basketball skills. The opposing team had the greatest basketball players of all time, including Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, and Shaquille O’Neal, among others. The game was to be broadcast on national television. All of the media buzzed about the game, including newspapers, TV, and radio. Masses of reporters gathered for a packed press conference before the game, where I had to answer questions for the media. One reporter asked, “So how do you expect to win this game, given that the odds against your team winning are greater than the odds against someone winning ten Powerball jackpots in a row?” I paused for a moment. If it was so unlikely for my team to win, why should we bother playing at all if the outcome was predetermined?
I considered this for a long while. Gradually, I came to believe that the key difference was psychological. I don’t have any control over the other team. I can’t put a hex on them and make them play badly. I can control my own mind, and I can control what I say to my teammates to motivate us to win. Most of the other people talked about how heavily outmatched we were and how the opposing team was going to walk all over us. If I, as a player on my team, bought into this, then we might as well have thrown in the towel and forfeited the game immediately. I believed that we would lose, as the statistics ordained, and it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The difference is that I can’t think like this going into the game if I wanted to give my team any chance of winning. I have to put myself in the frame of mind that causes me to perform at the highest level possible. I have to believe that if we play our hearts out, it’ll make a difference.
We decided to believe in ourselves. We went ahead and played the game, but we lost by 148 points. Even if this meant that by our attitude we avoided losing by 150 points, it was worthwhile. By believing that we had no chance of winning, our fate was sealed. Instead, by believing in ourselves, we gave ourselves a better chance, even if we still ended up losing.
I wondered if other people thought this way about their lives in general. Do people selectively ignore negative qualities or facts about themselves on purpose in order to give themselves a happy life? I used to think that this was the same thing as living a lie, or “living in denial.” When I interact with people in a social situation, or any other situation for that matter, how can I just choose to ignore the fact that I’m fat, I’m weird, I’m lazy, I’m a coward, I’m old, I’m shy, I’m awkward, I have no friends, I have no hobbies, I have no money, I have no car, I have no job, I have no career, I live in my own filth in an apartment that looks like an abandoned warehouse and smells like a sewer, and so on? But maybe it’s not a matter of living a lie. Maybe it’s a matter of doing what I can to give myself the best chance of winning in life. It didn’t matter that my team had absolutely no basketball skills. It didn’t matter that the opposing team was immensely quicker and more agile than we were. What mattered was that we took charge over the things we could control. If we could control our attitudes toward a game of basketball, I can control my attitude toward my life.
What happened on Monday renewed my faith in reality. (Not the world, not humanity, but reality. I still believe that the world is a cold, cruel place, and that humans are intrinsically evil, but I learned that reality doesn’t suck as badly as I thought.) I realized that in spite of having the most depressing and worst possible things happen in my life, there’s always a chance of something positive happening. This doesn’t end my struggle, though. This hasn’t made me rule out suicide as an option. If I get dismayed because days, months, and years pass by without anything good happening, then I will probably decide that it’s better just to end it. I used to believe that nothing positive would ever happen to me again -- or at least that the likelihood of something positive happening was close to zero. Close enough to be zero, for all intents and purposes. Monday proved me wrong.
Most, if not all the entries written in this blog so far came from an extremely depressed perspective. I did this because I identified most closely with the emotions associated with depression. However, what happened Monday actually made me feel “icky.” I had held on so strongly to my depression to the point where it caused me to develop distorted interpretations of reality. I interpreted that anything or anyone challenging my attitude was really trying to get on my case and tell me to “shut the fuck up,” which was the same thing as invalidating my emotions and experiences. When the impossible happened and something good actually took place, I felt weird. It felt like embarrassment. I was embarrassed because I had been such a staunch supporter of my negative beliefs that I never gave a moment’s thought to the possibility of something good happening. Now that something good really did happen, I feel like an idiot. It's like being a former supporter of a politician running for office that lost and faded into obscurity. The supporter never mentions what he did in the past because he’s embarrassed that he was associated with a no-name loser. People almost never talk about the ex-politician. Some have even forgotten his name.
I felt like all this time, I should’ve lightened up. Life wasn’t as bad as I was insisting. Instead of being negative all the time, I should relax and give myself a chance for positive things to happen. However, last Monday could be the last time that anything good will ever happen in my life again. Given that nothing good has happened to me for the past eleven years, it’s a pretty sure bet that nothing good will happen for the next eleven (if I choose to live that long). I guess the lesson I learned here is that I have to believe that David can beat Goliath. I have to believe in Cinderella. I have to give myself a chance for something good to happen, if that’s what I want in life.
Etc.
I apologize if what I wrote above sounded really corny, but my shift in attitude was real, and I don’t have the writing skills to convey the impact that had on me without sounding trite. And I’m really sorry I can’t give any more details about what actually happened. I’m dying to say what happened, but because I want to protect the privacy of someone I personally know, I won’t. (I know, socially isolated individuals aren’t supposed to know anyone personally. Okay, I was wrong. I have one exception. But it’s just one. :) )
A final bit of news is that I've started receiving critical feedback (read: hate mail) over this blog. I guess this was inevitable. Being flamed must be the Internet equivalent of a Red Badge of Courage. I prepared to write a 2000-word essay in my defense, but at the last minute, I decided not to. My "cooler head" prevailed. I realized that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, so I just let it go. Score one for wise mind (a DBT concept)!
I hope I’ll remember this in the future. I’m scheduled for shock therapy (euphemistically known as ECT) sometime within the next couple of months, a procedure well known for its memory-wiping side effects. I’ve heard stories of people forgetting entire decades of their lives. When they try to ask their doctor why they were never told that this could happen, they find out that he disappeared, probably to some unknown location in South America. I’ll write myself a note the day before my electrocution to remind myself that I have a blog. :)
I wish I could ask for “old-school” shock therapy. I want to be awake when I experience first-hand the feeling of being electrocuted under restraints and flopping around all over the place like a fish out of water. I would even ask them not to give me a mouthpiece, so that I can feel the experience of biting my own tongue off and of seeing my blood spurt out of my mouth like a water fountain. If I survive the experience, I would ask for my tongue back so that I could attach it to a necklace and wear it around my neck as a keepsake. (Although I’m not sure that a person can survive having their tongue cut off. Isn’t there an artery in there?) Because of having to numb myself due to a lifetime of painful emotions and experiences, only being electrocuted would tell me if I was capable of feeling anything anymore.
What I really should do is ask them to crank the notch up a little bit. Around 2,000 volts at 10 amps for about a minute and a half should do the trick.
An event that occurred last Monday caused me to rethink my attitude toward life. I imagined having to play in a basketball game. My team consisted of normal, everyday guys who had no basketball skills. The opposing team had the greatest basketball players of all time, including Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, and Shaquille O’Neal, among others. The game was to be broadcast on national television. All of the media buzzed about the game, including newspapers, TV, and radio. Masses of reporters gathered for a packed press conference before the game, where I had to answer questions for the media. One reporter asked, “So how do you expect to win this game, given that the odds against your team winning are greater than the odds against someone winning ten Powerball jackpots in a row?” I paused for a moment. If it was so unlikely for my team to win, why should we bother playing at all if the outcome was predetermined?
I considered this for a long while. Gradually, I came to believe that the key difference was psychological. I don’t have any control over the other team. I can’t put a hex on them and make them play badly. I can control my own mind, and I can control what I say to my teammates to motivate us to win. Most of the other people talked about how heavily outmatched we were and how the opposing team was going to walk all over us. If I, as a player on my team, bought into this, then we might as well have thrown in the towel and forfeited the game immediately. I believed that we would lose, as the statistics ordained, and it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The difference is that I can’t think like this going into the game if I wanted to give my team any chance of winning. I have to put myself in the frame of mind that causes me to perform at the highest level possible. I have to believe that if we play our hearts out, it’ll make a difference.
We decided to believe in ourselves. We went ahead and played the game, but we lost by 148 points. Even if this meant that by our attitude we avoided losing by 150 points, it was worthwhile. By believing that we had no chance of winning, our fate was sealed. Instead, by believing in ourselves, we gave ourselves a better chance, even if we still ended up losing.
I wondered if other people thought this way about their lives in general. Do people selectively ignore negative qualities or facts about themselves on purpose in order to give themselves a happy life? I used to think that this was the same thing as living a lie, or “living in denial.” When I interact with people in a social situation, or any other situation for that matter, how can I just choose to ignore the fact that I’m fat, I’m weird, I’m lazy, I’m a coward, I’m old, I’m shy, I’m awkward, I have no friends, I have no hobbies, I have no money, I have no car, I have no job, I have no career, I live in my own filth in an apartment that looks like an abandoned warehouse and smells like a sewer, and so on? But maybe it’s not a matter of living a lie. Maybe it’s a matter of doing what I can to give myself the best chance of winning in life. It didn’t matter that my team had absolutely no basketball skills. It didn’t matter that the opposing team was immensely quicker and more agile than we were. What mattered was that we took charge over the things we could control. If we could control our attitudes toward a game of basketball, I can control my attitude toward my life.
What happened on Monday renewed my faith in reality. (Not the world, not humanity, but reality. I still believe that the world is a cold, cruel place, and that humans are intrinsically evil, but I learned that reality doesn’t suck as badly as I thought.) I realized that in spite of having the most depressing and worst possible things happen in my life, there’s always a chance of something positive happening. This doesn’t end my struggle, though. This hasn’t made me rule out suicide as an option. If I get dismayed because days, months, and years pass by without anything good happening, then I will probably decide that it’s better just to end it. I used to believe that nothing positive would ever happen to me again -- or at least that the likelihood of something positive happening was close to zero. Close enough to be zero, for all intents and purposes. Monday proved me wrong.
Most, if not all the entries written in this blog so far came from an extremely depressed perspective. I did this because I identified most closely with the emotions associated with depression. However, what happened Monday actually made me feel “icky.” I had held on so strongly to my depression to the point where it caused me to develop distorted interpretations of reality. I interpreted that anything or anyone challenging my attitude was really trying to get on my case and tell me to “shut the fuck up,” which was the same thing as invalidating my emotions and experiences. When the impossible happened and something good actually took place, I felt weird. It felt like embarrassment. I was embarrassed because I had been such a staunch supporter of my negative beliefs that I never gave a moment’s thought to the possibility of something good happening. Now that something good really did happen, I feel like an idiot. It's like being a former supporter of a politician running for office that lost and faded into obscurity. The supporter never mentions what he did in the past because he’s embarrassed that he was associated with a no-name loser. People almost never talk about the ex-politician. Some have even forgotten his name.
I felt like all this time, I should’ve lightened up. Life wasn’t as bad as I was insisting. Instead of being negative all the time, I should relax and give myself a chance for positive things to happen. However, last Monday could be the last time that anything good will ever happen in my life again. Given that nothing good has happened to me for the past eleven years, it’s a pretty sure bet that nothing good will happen for the next eleven (if I choose to live that long). I guess the lesson I learned here is that I have to believe that David can beat Goliath. I have to believe in Cinderella. I have to give myself a chance for something good to happen, if that’s what I want in life.
Etc.
I apologize if what I wrote above sounded really corny, but my shift in attitude was real, and I don’t have the writing skills to convey the impact that had on me without sounding trite. And I’m really sorry I can’t give any more details about what actually happened. I’m dying to say what happened, but because I want to protect the privacy of someone I personally know, I won’t. (I know, socially isolated individuals aren’t supposed to know anyone personally. Okay, I was wrong. I have one exception. But it’s just one. :) )
A final bit of news is that I've started receiving critical feedback (read: hate mail) over this blog. I guess this was inevitable. Being flamed must be the Internet equivalent of a Red Badge of Courage. I prepared to write a 2000-word essay in my defense, but at the last minute, I decided not to. My "cooler head" prevailed. I realized that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, so I just let it go. Score one for wise mind (a DBT concept)!
I hope I’ll remember this in the future. I’m scheduled for shock therapy (euphemistically known as ECT) sometime within the next couple of months, a procedure well known for its memory-wiping side effects. I’ve heard stories of people forgetting entire decades of their lives. When they try to ask their doctor why they were never told that this could happen, they find out that he disappeared, probably to some unknown location in South America. I’ll write myself a note the day before my electrocution to remind myself that I have a blog. :)
I wish I could ask for “old-school” shock therapy. I want to be awake when I experience first-hand the feeling of being electrocuted under restraints and flopping around all over the place like a fish out of water. I would even ask them not to give me a mouthpiece, so that I can feel the experience of biting my own tongue off and of seeing my blood spurt out of my mouth like a water fountain. If I survive the experience, I would ask for my tongue back so that I could attach it to a necklace and wear it around my neck as a keepsake. (Although I’m not sure that a person can survive having their tongue cut off. Isn’t there an artery in there?) Because of having to numb myself due to a lifetime of painful emotions and experiences, only being electrocuted would tell me if I was capable of feeling anything anymore.
What I really should do is ask them to crank the notch up a little bit. Around 2,000 volts at 10 amps for about a minute and a half should do the trick.
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Today I just wanted to write something along the lines of a "statement of purpose."
I intended this blog primarily to be a journal. However, I did not intend this blog to be a “This morning I got up, took a shower, brushed my teeth, and when I took a shit I wiped my ass with my left hand instead of my right” kind of blog. I like to think this blog appeals to a wider audience. I’m trying to write from the perspective of an individual suffering from depression and suicidal thinking. It’s similar to William Styron’s Darkness Visible or Kay Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, except that they’re well-known and I’m unknown. Nevertheless, an account of depression is an account of depression.
In Darkness Visible, I couldn’t understand how Styron seems to make a complete recovery just by his stay at a hospital. Since my depression started, I’ve stayed in three different hospitals for a total of eleven weeks, and today I still wish I succeeded in committing suicide as I originally planned back in 1995. Now, I’m not trying to take away from Styron’s experiences by implying that he hasn’t suffered as much as I have. No matter what the situation, chances are that there is always someone worse off than another is. What bothers me is that I couldn't find an account anywhere in Darkness Visible describing details of how he recovered. I originally read both books in an attempt to find exhaustive case studies of depressed and suicidal individuals who managed to survive despite their suffering. I figured that if someone else before me succeeded in fighting the good fight, I could just mimic whatever he or she did so that I could recover from my own depression.
I don’t understand how a depressed individual can “magically” recover from depression by staying in a hospital. I believe strongly in causality, i.e. whatever happens happens for a reason. This doesn’t mean that I believe someone swatting a fly in Cambodia causes stock prices at Wall Street to skyrocket. It means that I believe that many causal relationships between events go unnoticed. If Styron recovered by staying in a hospital, then during his stay, in my opinion, specific changes must have taken place in order for that to happen. Maybe just being away from the real world for a while did it. Maybe he made specific changes in his state of mind or in his interpretation of events that enabled him to have a brighter look at life. But what exactly were all the changes, and where did they take place? Did he tell himself that if he screws up when he’s trying to balance his checkbook, he should just chill out and not have a heart attack? Or did he tell himself something broad like it’s not worth getting upset over the unfortunate events that happen in life? Or did he become more optimistic and find more things in the future to look forward to? And if he did make changes, how did he come to know what changes to make?
In An Unquiet Mind, the conditions surrounding Kay Jamison’s depression differ significantly from mine. That’s one of the problems with depression –- although depressed individuals may share symptoms of their illness, they don’t necessarily share the life circumstances that precipitated their illness. Jamison suffered just as much, if not more than I have, but she did have some important supports that I lacked (and currently still lack) that she might have taken for granted. This leads to the second point why my blog deviates from the norm: Kay Jamison had supportive friends and loved ones whom she could turn to. I don’t. I took the social anxiety / avoidant / social isolation path into depression’s grasp, along with many other deficiencies.
Social isolation is a particularly insidious condition. Try looking at the first page of search results for social isolation at Google. Nearly every result contains a reference to the elderly (at least, as of this date). The elderly? Only the elderly suffer from social isolation? What does this mean? Am I the first and only creature in the entire universe freakish enough to be socially isolated below the age of 65? Did I break a world record by being the only person in all of history who was so much of a loser that he couldn’t make any friends? Is this supposed to make me feel good about myself? Is this supposed to give me a reason to live?
Social isolation is a fate worse than death in some ways. When you die, you will probably get a funeral, people will grieve for you, and people will miss you (although I know that you wouldn’t be alive to appreciate it). When you’re socially isolated, nobody knows a single thing about you. They don’t know if you’re happy, they don’t know if you’re depressed, they don’t know what you do, they don’t know what’s going on in your life or how that affects you, and so on. Your presence is not noticed in any world except the one in your mind. Your actions have no meaning. Your feelings are irrelevant. You may start to adopt odd behavior from being away from others for so long, which separates you even more from others. When you’re in distress, you have absolutely no one to turn to. Nobody is there for you. No one can hear you scream. You must suffer in silence.
Worst of all, social isolation is intentional. You’re the one not answering phone calls or keeping in touch with people. You’re the one locking yourself in your own apartment. You’re the one not asking for help. You’re the one who isn’t reaching out to others. You’re the one not taking interest in other people’s lives. Other people may try to help you, but you have to allow them to help you. Isolating yourself is equivalent to refusing help, even though you know you need as much help from others as possible if you want to have a chance of surviving. You choose to suffer in silence.
Because of all of the above reasons, I’m writing this blog not just as a vehicle for self-expression. I’m trying to write as specific and as detailed an account as possible of my own particular descent into darkness, mostly because I haven’t found such an account that already exists (although I might not have looked hard enough). I'm not trying to flaunt my suffering by belittling the suffering of others. However, I probably won’t sit here and do things like writing flowery poetry to convey my experience of depression (though I don’t have anything against that). I’m trying to create a quantitative, concrete, methodical, analytical, and objective account of what I experience, why I experienced it, my interpretation of what I experience, and why I interpret the experience the way I do. It’s possible that I sound like I have no idea what I’m talking about. It is true that I don’t have any formal background in psychology or anything remotely similar. All I can do is describe what I experience in the way that I experience it. One also may argue that depression doesn’t lend itself to this kind of analysis. It may not, but that won’t stop me from trying.
--
In other news, I have to say that something very important happened to me on Monday. Unfortunately, I can't say anything else about it. :( I lacked the prescience to write this blog under a pseudonym. I'm afraid some people out there can put two and two together and deduce my identity in the real world. Some of these individuals will seriously take issue with what I've written. Of course, if I had any balls, I shouldn't care. It's just that I've said things here that I, or any civilized person, would never say to or in front of other people under any circumstances. Oh well, if it happens, it happens. All I know is that I told the truth.
What I can say is how this event affected me, which actually may be more important. I can't finish writing about it now, but I'll pick up where I left off next time.
I intended this blog primarily to be a journal. However, I did not intend this blog to be a “This morning I got up, took a shower, brushed my teeth, and when I took a shit I wiped my ass with my left hand instead of my right” kind of blog. I like to think this blog appeals to a wider audience. I’m trying to write from the perspective of an individual suffering from depression and suicidal thinking. It’s similar to William Styron’s Darkness Visible or Kay Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, except that they’re well-known and I’m unknown. Nevertheless, an account of depression is an account of depression.
In Darkness Visible, I couldn’t understand how Styron seems to make a complete recovery just by his stay at a hospital. Since my depression started, I’ve stayed in three different hospitals for a total of eleven weeks, and today I still wish I succeeded in committing suicide as I originally planned back in 1995. Now, I’m not trying to take away from Styron’s experiences by implying that he hasn’t suffered as much as I have. No matter what the situation, chances are that there is always someone worse off than another is. What bothers me is that I couldn't find an account anywhere in Darkness Visible describing details of how he recovered. I originally read both books in an attempt to find exhaustive case studies of depressed and suicidal individuals who managed to survive despite their suffering. I figured that if someone else before me succeeded in fighting the good fight, I could just mimic whatever he or she did so that I could recover from my own depression.
I don’t understand how a depressed individual can “magically” recover from depression by staying in a hospital. I believe strongly in causality, i.e. whatever happens happens for a reason. This doesn’t mean that I believe someone swatting a fly in Cambodia causes stock prices at Wall Street to skyrocket. It means that I believe that many causal relationships between events go unnoticed. If Styron recovered by staying in a hospital, then during his stay, in my opinion, specific changes must have taken place in order for that to happen. Maybe just being away from the real world for a while did it. Maybe he made specific changes in his state of mind or in his interpretation of events that enabled him to have a brighter look at life. But what exactly were all the changes, and where did they take place? Did he tell himself that if he screws up when he’s trying to balance his checkbook, he should just chill out and not have a heart attack? Or did he tell himself something broad like it’s not worth getting upset over the unfortunate events that happen in life? Or did he become more optimistic and find more things in the future to look forward to? And if he did make changes, how did he come to know what changes to make?
In An Unquiet Mind, the conditions surrounding Kay Jamison’s depression differ significantly from mine. That’s one of the problems with depression –- although depressed individuals may share symptoms of their illness, they don’t necessarily share the life circumstances that precipitated their illness. Jamison suffered just as much, if not more than I have, but she did have some important supports that I lacked (and currently still lack) that she might have taken for granted. This leads to the second point why my blog deviates from the norm: Kay Jamison had supportive friends and loved ones whom she could turn to. I don’t. I took the social anxiety / avoidant / social isolation path into depression’s grasp, along with many other deficiencies.
Social isolation is a particularly insidious condition. Try looking at the first page of search results for social isolation at Google. Nearly every result contains a reference to the elderly (at least, as of this date). The elderly? Only the elderly suffer from social isolation? What does this mean? Am I the first and only creature in the entire universe freakish enough to be socially isolated below the age of 65? Did I break a world record by being the only person in all of history who was so much of a loser that he couldn’t make any friends? Is this supposed to make me feel good about myself? Is this supposed to give me a reason to live?
Social isolation is a fate worse than death in some ways. When you die, you will probably get a funeral, people will grieve for you, and people will miss you (although I know that you wouldn’t be alive to appreciate it). When you’re socially isolated, nobody knows a single thing about you. They don’t know if you’re happy, they don’t know if you’re depressed, they don’t know what you do, they don’t know what’s going on in your life or how that affects you, and so on. Your presence is not noticed in any world except the one in your mind. Your actions have no meaning. Your feelings are irrelevant. You may start to adopt odd behavior from being away from others for so long, which separates you even more from others. When you’re in distress, you have absolutely no one to turn to. Nobody is there for you. No one can hear you scream. You must suffer in silence.
Worst of all, social isolation is intentional. You’re the one not answering phone calls or keeping in touch with people. You’re the one locking yourself in your own apartment. You’re the one not asking for help. You’re the one who isn’t reaching out to others. You’re the one not taking interest in other people’s lives. Other people may try to help you, but you have to allow them to help you. Isolating yourself is equivalent to refusing help, even though you know you need as much help from others as possible if you want to have a chance of surviving. You choose to suffer in silence.
Because of all of the above reasons, I’m writing this blog not just as a vehicle for self-expression. I’m trying to write as specific and as detailed an account as possible of my own particular descent into darkness, mostly because I haven’t found such an account that already exists (although I might not have looked hard enough). I'm not trying to flaunt my suffering by belittling the suffering of others. However, I probably won’t sit here and do things like writing flowery poetry to convey my experience of depression (though I don’t have anything against that). I’m trying to create a quantitative, concrete, methodical, analytical, and objective account of what I experience, why I experienced it, my interpretation of what I experience, and why I interpret the experience the way I do. It’s possible that I sound like I have no idea what I’m talking about. It is true that I don’t have any formal background in psychology or anything remotely similar. All I can do is describe what I experience in the way that I experience it. One also may argue that depression doesn’t lend itself to this kind of analysis. It may not, but that won’t stop me from trying.
--
In other news, I have to say that something very important happened to me on Monday. Unfortunately, I can't say anything else about it. :( I lacked the prescience to write this blog under a pseudonym. I'm afraid some people out there can put two and two together and deduce my identity in the real world. Some of these individuals will seriously take issue with what I've written. Of course, if I had any balls, I shouldn't care. It's just that I've said things here that I, or any civilized person, would never say to or in front of other people under any circumstances. Oh well, if it happens, it happens. All I know is that I told the truth.
What I can say is how this event affected me, which actually may be more important. I can't finish writing about it now, but I'll pick up where I left off next time.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
My telephone line kicked the bucket again. This aggravation has caused hell for me now for three days. I had to call my telephone company again from a payphone. I'll have to post-date my entries here. This fucking pisses me off.
I still feel so depressed. I'm probably going to say that hundreds of times in this journal. It's true. Failure always follows me. I've said that before, too. When it comes to anything negative, I'll probably repeat myself.
I just feel so much emotional pain. It makes me want to cry sometimes. Often I don't cry because I'm almost completely desensitized to all my emotions. This probably comes from when I was younger. I was conditioned to believe that all that matters are actions and results. If I had any emotions that interfered with completing a given task, I had to disregard them. Over time, this caused undesirable side effects. It had the effect of making me fail to recognize many emotions. Whenever I chatted with someone and the subject of my feelings came up, most of the time I had no idea what I felt, thanks to a lifetime of ignoring my emotions. This prevented me from being able to form many close relationships, because sharing my true emotions allows me to feel closer to someone. Also, I have virtually no spontaneity. I need to learn to react to my emotions naturally if I want that. To me, not having spontaneity forms a real barrier to making friendships.
Speaking of friendships, another obstacle for me is to suppress my emotions in order to avoid making the other person uncomfortable in any way. Some people call this "people-pleasing." I force myself to like whatever the other person likes. I almost never express any negative emotions because I believe this will minimize any potential friction between the other person and me. Expressing negative emotions terrifies me if it causes anger in the other person. Unfortunately, I end up shooting myself in the leg. By not expressing my true emotions, the other person never gets to know the real me.
I can't carry on feeling as much emotional pain as I do for much longer. Right now, I deal with it by distracting myself from the pain as much as possible. Luckily, I can do this. If I had unrelenting physical pain, nothing could distract me from that.
Writing this journal helps a little. I could never do this before, because it seemed futile to write down things that other people would never see. Writing in the journal had no meaning for me. Now it does because of a little trick I made up. When I write an entry, I pretend that I write to someone who deeply, deeply cares about what I do and how I feel. This imaginary person feels sad whenever I feel sad, and feels pain whenever I feel pain. I feel like I'm sharing my burden with someone because I'm making another human being aware of the unbearable pain and suffering I've gone through for the past eleven years. (One may argue that if I managed to survive for eleven years, why can't I survive for eleven more? I can't because I feel the desire to die on a daily basis. If this urge is left unchecked, I will kill myself. There is no light at the end of my tunnel. I can only see into the future for a few days. After that, I don't have the foggiest idea how I will survive. It'll be equally likely that by that time I'll be dead rather than alive.) I may sound like I'm fishing for sympathy. I'm not because I don't care whether the other person responds to me or not. All that matters to me is that I won't be suffering in silence, which to me is a fate worse than death.
Of course, the key word here is pretending. This whole thing might make me sound like a lunatic. Lunacy or not, I must do this in order to survive. In my condition, I need as many ways as possible of hanging on to life, even if it means concocting an imaginary friend. It's similar to believing in God in Christianity. Its first commandment mandates that one must believe in God, even in the absence of any physical evidence. As defined, God does not manifest himself in the physical world. The existence or nonexistence of such an entity cannot be proven. Therefore, one must have faith in order to believe in God. This faith is exactly the same as my belief in my imaginary journal-friend.
So far, it works. I'm worried that at some point in the future, I'll think that this whole deal was just an enormous waste of time. I hope this won't happen because I have a motive -- I want to do anything possible to make my never-ending pain more bearable. After all, even if I did stop doing this, I wouldn't be any worse off than before.
I still feel so depressed. I'm probably going to say that hundreds of times in this journal. It's true. Failure always follows me. I've said that before, too. When it comes to anything negative, I'll probably repeat myself.
I just feel so much emotional pain. It makes me want to cry sometimes. Often I don't cry because I'm almost completely desensitized to all my emotions. This probably comes from when I was younger. I was conditioned to believe that all that matters are actions and results. If I had any emotions that interfered with completing a given task, I had to disregard them. Over time, this caused undesirable side effects. It had the effect of making me fail to recognize many emotions. Whenever I chatted with someone and the subject of my feelings came up, most of the time I had no idea what I felt, thanks to a lifetime of ignoring my emotions. This prevented me from being able to form many close relationships, because sharing my true emotions allows me to feel closer to someone. Also, I have virtually no spontaneity. I need to learn to react to my emotions naturally if I want that. To me, not having spontaneity forms a real barrier to making friendships.
Speaking of friendships, another obstacle for me is to suppress my emotions in order to avoid making the other person uncomfortable in any way. Some people call this "people-pleasing." I force myself to like whatever the other person likes. I almost never express any negative emotions because I believe this will minimize any potential friction between the other person and me. Expressing negative emotions terrifies me if it causes anger in the other person. Unfortunately, I end up shooting myself in the leg. By not expressing my true emotions, the other person never gets to know the real me.
I can't carry on feeling as much emotional pain as I do for much longer. Right now, I deal with it by distracting myself from the pain as much as possible. Luckily, I can do this. If I had unrelenting physical pain, nothing could distract me from that.
Writing this journal helps a little. I could never do this before, because it seemed futile to write down things that other people would never see. Writing in the journal had no meaning for me. Now it does because of a little trick I made up. When I write an entry, I pretend that I write to someone who deeply, deeply cares about what I do and how I feel. This imaginary person feels sad whenever I feel sad, and feels pain whenever I feel pain. I feel like I'm sharing my burden with someone because I'm making another human being aware of the unbearable pain and suffering I've gone through for the past eleven years. (One may argue that if I managed to survive for eleven years, why can't I survive for eleven more? I can't because I feel the desire to die on a daily basis. If this urge is left unchecked, I will kill myself. There is no light at the end of my tunnel. I can only see into the future for a few days. After that, I don't have the foggiest idea how I will survive. It'll be equally likely that by that time I'll be dead rather than alive.) I may sound like I'm fishing for sympathy. I'm not because I don't care whether the other person responds to me or not. All that matters to me is that I won't be suffering in silence, which to me is a fate worse than death.
Of course, the key word here is pretending. This whole thing might make me sound like a lunatic. Lunacy or not, I must do this in order to survive. In my condition, I need as many ways as possible of hanging on to life, even if it means concocting an imaginary friend. It's similar to believing in God in Christianity. Its first commandment mandates that one must believe in God, even in the absence of any physical evidence. As defined, God does not manifest himself in the physical world. The existence or nonexistence of such an entity cannot be proven. Therefore, one must have faith in order to believe in God. This faith is exactly the same as my belief in my imaginary journal-friend.
So far, it works. I'm worried that at some point in the future, I'll think that this whole deal was just an enormous waste of time. I hope this won't happen because I have a motive -- I want to do anything possible to make my never-ending pain more bearable. After all, even if I did stop doing this, I wouldn't be any worse off than before.
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