So this is my third — and final, I have decided — draft of this post. In the first, I introduced myself and rambled on for paragraphs about why I was posting here. In the second, I introduced myself then tried to give some background to the issue I’m having now. It ended up, as its precursor, in the trash after the sixth paragraph. I have a tendency to write screeds of text when I try to talk about my depression, because there’s just so much that goes into it that I don’t know where to start. So I’ll start here: I am depressed. There’s all the information you really need to know in that one sentence. I could go on for ages about the various nature and nurture factors going into that fact, but in the end, it all ends at that. I am miserable and there’s nothing I can really do about it.
When I visit him, my father ignorantly asks me what I’m depressed about at least once a week as if I’ll ever have an answer for him, but the truth is that I never quite know what is causing my paralyzing grief at that particular moment in time, and to give one pitiful example seems insufficient given the magnitude of it all and its effect on my life. It is not solely the fact that my transphobic family refuses to acknowledge me as the woman I identify as, nor even my fear of my brother who hardly half a year ago physically assaulted me — my family insists it was a harmless fight, blissfully ignoring the fact that I, as a pacifist, refused to strike him. I have an ex who gaslighted me for years, lying to my face about my own past until I no longer trusted my own memory. I have nightmares about him bimonthly, but even he is not solely responsible. My mother, an depressed alcoholic, wasted away in poverty until cirrhosis took her liver and her life when I was thirteen. The lingering pain and regret of that loss affected me for years, but that is not why I am incapable of functioning today.
My life is not a tragedy. I have innumerable privileges, from my wealth to my light skin, from my supportive friends to my wonderful partner, and I never forget that. Yet here I am, broken, numb, apathetic. I stopped taking hormones after three months and haven’t talked to my doctor since. Of every course I took this year, I only passed one. I do not remember the last project I started that actually reached completion. My depression rules my existance and I don’t even know how to talk about it.
I feel like there should be more to this post, but I also feel like I’ve gone on too long again. A large part of me doesn’t even want to put it up. You all are not my therapist. You are not responsible for my well- being. It’s a selfish thing, really, but I just want to be heard, I suppose. I want to feel like I actually exist. For the past year, I have simply lived in the protective bubble that is my partner’s love. I have failed, repeatedly, but I have survived, and I suppose I’m tired of simply surviving.
kittehserf MOD
10 years ago
Thanks, I must try that!
Phoenician in a time of Romans
10 years ago
@Cassandrakitty: I have real issues with the idea that being anti Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians is being anti-semitic. Even within Israel itself there’s opposition (from people who are Jewish) to a lot of what the government is doing, so when people try to frame things as if wanting what the Israeli govt is doing to the Palestinians to stop as being as sign that you don’t give a shit about Jewish people it feels very disingenuous.
The wingnuts hyperventilate every time you call Israel an apartheid nation, stating that this is beyond the pale and anyone making that statement must be anti-semitic.
Turns out that a 2012 opinion poll suggests that a majority of Israelis may think Israel has apartheid policies, although the results are contested.
And you don’t have to. You can bin it, ignore it, print it out & line the kitty box with it (if you have a kitty box), whatever you like. Do whatever feels right for you.
Congratulations on publishing your paper and glad you had a nice coauthor. Way to go, you!
Kat
10 years ago
I’m still having huge problems with my stepson’s mum.
She seems to have stopped spanking him, thank god, but that may be because she has hardly seen him. She got him a nursery placement where she lives (very far from us) which totally altered our schedule, without consulting us, so that was stressful. He has only attended three days out of the past nine though, and all the other days…we’ve wound up having him, at short notice, for extremely flimsy reasons.
Last week, she texted us on Monday night telling us she couldn’t pick him up the next day, as scheduled, and didn’t know when she could because she had a “kidney infection” which transformed into “gastric inflammation” which then went away in time for her to have him for two days, only to recur this week, again one day before she had to pick him up. We had him three extra days, today she is sufficiently rested to take him for one day. Not only does she see no problem with this, she also sees no problem giving my partner grief – insults, attitude, woe-is-me rants – if he checks in too often because she has literally gone “you have him until…who knows when? I’ll keep you updated” and then doesn’t.
Last weekend, the day we dropped him off, I got norovirus. I couldn’t even keep water down, but I had to force myself to keep drinking only to throw it + bile up, over and over. We wound up asking her to keep him extra (for the second time in two and a half years) because if he caught it…I mean, how am I going to convince a three year old to drink water when it will invariably just trigger a painful fit of vomiting? He could have ended up in hospital. But she point blank refused to take him more than one extra night i.e. we were going to pick him up last thing on Sunday, we wound up picking him up first thing on Monday. She sent three multiple-page texts decrying my partner and I for “using her” when she “can’t afford all these extra days” and she claimed “when I ask you, you’re my last resort but it seems like you just come to me for anything!” She also suggested I go stay ‘somewhere else’ while dangerously ill, quite apart from the fact there is nowhere I could go.
So anyway, that about sums up my life right now, and it’s beyond tiring. Something has to give.
thewatchingdog
10 years ago
I just wanted to spread the word theirs this blog called “the glass eye project” after spending some time reading & commenting there I think it may a original/hijacked subtle “operation lollipop 2.0 front”..just fyi
Flying Mouse
10 years ago
@TheVitulus – Hi, and welcome. If you need to speak, speak. A lot of people here – myself included – have suffered from depression. I haven’t lived your life, but I get where you’re coming from. So many hugs, if you want them.
You are definitely not alone. I’m a trans lesbian of color, and your experience with depression sounds so much like mine. It’s difficult if not impossible for me to articulate exactly why I’m depressed. I think it’s a very common experience, in fact. Grief is often all-encompassing in an inexplicable way, and can exist despite any privileges. Hell, I know a trans woman who also has various privileges (white, middle-class, etc.) and yet trauma and grief consume her on a regular basis.
You aren’t selfish at all for coming here to vent. This thread is for venting, among other things. We all need a means of venting about something, whether that thing is a minor annoyance or something like trauma. I have been in the open threads while having anxiety attacks and people here fully supportive.
Although I lurve Weird Al to pieces, you could take his Billy Idol parody “Alimony” and put it to that list, if only as a pisstake of the whole situation. “Angsty White Boy Polka”, “I Was Only Kidding”, also work.
Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” is, uh, obviously about the creepier segment of people.
Ministry’s “My Possession” is kind of obvious too.
Sister Machine Gun’s “Closer to Me” and Alice Cooper’s “Might as Well Be on Mars” are good for those creepy entitled stares-really-too-long-for-comfort dudes.
bunnybunny
10 years ago
Hugs to everyone who wants them. Hang in there and take care of yourselves.
Kat: Ugh, I’m sorry you’re still having so much trouble with your stepson’s mom. People who can’t keep a schedule are an enormous pain under any circumstance and I can only imagine how that problem compounds when there’s a child involved.
Still, I’m glad that he ends up spending so much time with you and, even more importantly, less time with his awful mom.
Statistics show that “forcible rape offenses fell by 31 percent in Rhode Island from 2004 to 2009” after indoor sex work was decriminalized. The article doesn’t insist that there’s causation here, but it’s pretty heavily implied: “With prostitution legally acceptable and cheaper than when it was a criminal offense, would-be rapists might shift away from violence toward women, opting to purchase sex instead.”
bunnybunny, About that Rhode Island study, to me it just really brings home the issue that we need to make sure that no one is doing sex work because they are economically or physically coerced into it — that it is freely chosen work (as much as any of us freely choose our work in a capitalist system, anyway). Otherwise I look at that study and think, “Are we forcing poor women to have sex with rapists to spare (some of) the rest of us?” And it kind of makes my skin crawl.
The misters are, of course, all over that study, with their usual (a) complete and total lack of regard for the health and safety of sex workers, and (b) assumptions that feminists who are critical of the actual living practice of sex work are so because we don’t want the “competition.”
More ick.
TheVitulus
10 years ago
Thanks for the responses. Came down to visit my dad last month for an indefinite period of time and it’s been difficult. I’m actually on academic probation in the fall, so I won’t be going back to school, but I don’t want to be here, so I’m not exactly sure where I’ll go. I’ve stayed with my partner and her parents before, but they — or at least her dad — been kinda hinting that they don’t want me doing that anymore, so I dunno. It’s been stressful and I’ve just kinda been escaping into minecraft all day so that I don’t have to deal with shit. This, of course, has given my dad more shit to throw at me. “Why are you in your room all day?” “You should be exercising more!” Whatever.
When I used to live at my dad’s place, I often stayed in my room by myself. It was my safe space because I knew that there was a high possibility of him screaming at me and berating me for not being an obedient “son”. And he would also berate me for being “fat” and not exercising enough. All of this was heavily traumatizing to me to the point that I have developed PTSD. I’m not equating your situation to mine, but I can relate and I’m so sorry you have to deal with such a father.
I can also relate to your anxiety about where to stay in the future. After I ran away from my dad’s place, I went to my step-dad’s place, and he made me do all kinds of intensive farm labor for him even though I was terrible at it. And he would constantly put me down for being lazy. I was also blamed for putting financial strain on the family, which was true, but also hurtful to hear. I eventually left and now I’m living with some trans friends of mine.
Speaking of that, there’s this Tumblr called the Transgender Housing Network that is there to help trans people find housing and help people with housing advertise it for trans people. Perhaps it could be of some help to you.
@Bunnybunny: If numbers really fell that low after indoor sex work was decriminalized, it seems much more plausible that the rapists nowadays prefer to rape sex workers since they figure that there’s hardly any risk of getting caught that way, no one’s gonna believe a sex worker who charges someone with rape etc, rather than raping other women – not that they magically stopped being rapists.
The idea that men become rapists because of sexual frustration, and allowing them to buy sex makes them nice again, is just… SO much wrong.
Sorry, was too quick to reply. The article mentions alternative hypotheses too, like maybe sex workers have better security now so it’s more difficult to rape. And they don’t say that rapists used to rape because of sexual frustration. So, made an angry response before properly reading the article, sorry.
I think one major reason for the decline in rape is that, since sex work is decriminalized, sex workers are less afraid of reporting their rape to the police. I doubt that sex workers have a good chance of getting justice because there is still institutional bias heavily stacked against them, but surely an increased proclivity to report does to some extent increase the chances of serial rapists being caught.
My life is not a tragedy. I have innumerable privileges, from my wealth to my light skin, from my supportive friends to my wonderful partner, and I never forget that. Yet here I am, broken, numb, apathetic. I stopped taking hormones after three months and haven’t talked to my doctor since. Of every course I took this year, I only passed one. I do not remember the last project I started that actually reached completion. My depression rules my existance and I don’t even know how to talk about it.
I feel like there should be more to this post, but I also feel like I’ve gone on too long again. A large part of me doesn’t even want to put it up. You all are not my therapist. You are not responsible for my well- being. It’s a selfish thing, really, but I just want to be heard, I suppose. I want to feel like I actually exist. For the past year, I have simply lived in the protective bubble that is my partner’s love. I have failed, repeatedly, but I have survived, and I suppose I’m tired of simply surviving.
Sure, that is true. All of that, I mean – we are not your therapists and we are not responsible for your well-being. Nor is it this neccesarily the forum that will, in the end, grant you the most optimal means to make your life as you want it to be, but, in all honesty
so fucking what?
It’s an open thread, and I, for one (and more than one with the others above mirroring the sentiment) welcome you to be open in this open thread with the things in your head and the way you happen to feel. Something just writing stuff out is exactly what you need, and if we can provide that then that is great and you are welcome to talk the talky talk.
Depression is rough.
Especially rough when you go through the mental samba routine of telling yourself: “Wait, I shouldn’t be depressed, look at my awesome life, it’s awesome, other people have it way worse than me, why am I feeling so pathetic? That’s pathetic! I’m so pathetic for being this pathetic and…” on and on and on it goes etcetera infinity.
I know because that happens to me. I keep a journal. I can quote myself going through that exact process repeatedly. I won’t, on account of not wanting to splurge all over this thread. But I know that mental train of thought very well, and often wonder how to derail the cargo transport of misery headed straight for self esteem station. Or… something. Honestly this metaphor kind of ran off the tracks for me now. I de-railed myself, you might say.
( Okay that was bad )
Anyway, let me just find my track of thought so I can arrive at some cogent conclusion in relation to all the above.
—-
I remember an odd sensation some time ago, the details of which are insignificant, but which can best be summed up as the fact that I had all the logical rational reasonable reasons in the world to feel great, and even more reasons that were neither logical, reasonable, rational or particularly sane to feel even better and… I just didn’t. The best thing I could do with it was make a half attempt at telling someone I knew that “You know, I don’t feel all that… anything. I don’t really feel anything. It’s a bit odd”. Sometimes that goes away these days, sometimes it doesn’t.
Depression is rough. It’s okay. It’s an open thread. Tell us what you want to tell us, if there’s anything you want to talk about.
Nequam
10 years ago
Did anyone mention that Hot Child in the City song yet? Given the obsession these guys have with underage girls it’s fitting.
Oh, you forgot the real good one in this line:
bunnybunny
10 years ago
Right, I didn’t mean to say that the article was only offering that one explanation (although the substitution hypothesis was arguably given the most attention).
@cloudiah: Wow, great commentary as always from the MR subreddit. MRAs think that feminists are opposed to the legalization of sex work? Huh.
We Hunted The Mammoth
[CN: depression, transmisogyny, abuse, violence]
So this is my third — and final, I have decided — draft of this post. In the first, I introduced myself and rambled on for paragraphs about why I was posting here. In the second, I introduced myself then tried to give some background to the issue I’m having now. It ended up, as its precursor, in the trash after the sixth paragraph. I have a tendency to write screeds of text when I try to talk about my depression, because there’s just so much that goes into it that I don’t know where to start. So I’ll start here: I am depressed. There’s all the information you really need to know in that one sentence. I could go on for ages about the various nature and nurture factors going into that fact, but in the end, it all ends at that. I am miserable and there’s nothing I can really do about it.
When I visit him, my father ignorantly asks me what I’m depressed about at least once a week as if I’ll ever have an answer for him, but the truth is that I never quite know what is causing my paralyzing grief at that particular moment in time, and to give one pitiful example seems insufficient given the magnitude of it all and its effect on my life. It is not solely the fact that my transphobic family refuses to acknowledge me as the woman I identify as, nor even my fear of my brother who hardly half a year ago physically assaulted me — my family insists it was a harmless fight, blissfully ignoring the fact that I, as a pacifist, refused to strike him. I have an ex who gaslighted me for years, lying to my face about my own past until I no longer trusted my own memory. I have nightmares about him bimonthly, but even he is not solely responsible. My mother, an depressed alcoholic, wasted away in poverty until cirrhosis took her liver and her life when I was thirteen. The lingering pain and regret of that loss affected me for years, but that is not why I am incapable of functioning today.
My life is not a tragedy. I have innumerable privileges, from my wealth to my light skin, from my supportive friends to my wonderful partner, and I never forget that. Yet here I am, broken, numb, apathetic. I stopped taking hormones after three months and haven’t talked to my doctor since. Of every course I took this year, I only passed one. I do not remember the last project I started that actually reached completion. My depression rules my existance and I don’t even know how to talk about it.
I feel like there should be more to this post, but I also feel like I’ve gone on too long again. A large part of me doesn’t even want to put it up. You all are not my therapist. You are not responsible for my well- being. It’s a selfish thing, really, but I just want to be heard, I suppose. I want to feel like I actually exist. For the past year, I have simply lived in the protective bubble that is my partner’s love. I have failed, repeatedly, but I have survived, and I suppose I’m tired of simply surviving.
Thanks, I must try that!
@Cassandrakitty: I have real issues with the idea that being anti Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians is being anti-semitic. Even within Israel itself there’s opposition (from people who are Jewish) to a lot of what the government is doing, so when people try to frame things as if wanting what the Israeli govt is doing to the Palestinians to stop as being as sign that you don’t give a shit about Jewish people it feels very disingenuous.
The wingnuts hyperventilate every time you call Israel an apartheid nation, stating that this is beyond the pale and anyone making that statement must be anti-semitic.
Turns out that a 2012 opinion poll suggests that a majority of Israelis may think Israel has apartheid policies, although the results are contested.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/haaretz-changes-tack-on-major-story-that-alleged-widespread-apartheid-attitudes-in-israel/
AL3H,
And you don’t have to. You can bin it, ignore it, print it out & line the kitty box with it (if you have a kitty box), whatever you like. Do whatever feels right for you.
Congratulations on publishing your paper and glad you had a nice coauthor. Way to go, you!
I’m still having huge problems with my stepson’s mum.
She seems to have stopped spanking him, thank god, but that may be because she has hardly seen him. She got him a nursery placement where she lives (very far from us) which totally altered our schedule, without consulting us, so that was stressful. He has only attended three days out of the past nine though, and all the other days…we’ve wound up having him, at short notice, for extremely flimsy reasons.
Last week, she texted us on Monday night telling us she couldn’t pick him up the next day, as scheduled, and didn’t know when she could because she had a “kidney infection” which transformed into “gastric inflammation” which then went away in time for her to have him for two days, only to recur this week, again one day before she had to pick him up. We had him three extra days, today she is sufficiently rested to take him for one day. Not only does she see no problem with this, she also sees no problem giving my partner grief – insults, attitude, woe-is-me rants – if he checks in too often because she has literally gone “you have him until…who knows when? I’ll keep you updated” and then doesn’t.
Last weekend, the day we dropped him off, I got norovirus. I couldn’t even keep water down, but I had to force myself to keep drinking only to throw it + bile up, over and over. We wound up asking her to keep him extra (for the second time in two and a half years) because if he caught it…I mean, how am I going to convince a three year old to drink water when it will invariably just trigger a painful fit of vomiting? He could have ended up in hospital. But she point blank refused to take him more than one extra night i.e. we were going to pick him up last thing on Sunday, we wound up picking him up first thing on Monday. She sent three multiple-page texts decrying my partner and I for “using her” when she “can’t afford all these extra days” and she claimed “when I ask you, you’re my last resort but it seems like you just come to me for anything!” She also suggested I go stay ‘somewhere else’ while dangerously ill, quite apart from the fact there is nowhere I could go.
So anyway, that about sums up my life right now, and it’s beyond tiring. Something has to give.
I just wanted to spread the word theirs this blog called “the glass eye project” after spending some time reading & commenting there I think it may a original/hijacked subtle “operation lollipop 2.0 front”..just fyi
@TheVitulus – Hi, and welcome. If you need to speak, speak. A lot of people here – myself included – have suffered from depression. I haven’t lived your life, but I get where you’re coming from. So many hugs, if you want them.
@TheVitulus
You are definitely not alone. I’m a trans lesbian of color, and your experience with depression sounds so much like mine. It’s difficult if not impossible for me to articulate exactly why I’m depressed. I think it’s a very common experience, in fact. Grief is often all-encompassing in an inexplicable way, and can exist despite any privileges. Hell, I know a trans woman who also has various privileges (white, middle-class, etc.) and yet trauma and grief consume her on a regular basis.
You aren’t selfish at all for coming here to vent. This thread is for venting, among other things. We all need a means of venting about something, whether that thing is a minor annoyance or something like trauma. I have been in the open threads while having anxiety attacks and people here fully supportive.
@strivingally
Although I lurve Weird Al to pieces, you could take his Billy Idol parody “Alimony” and put it to that list, if only as a pisstake of the whole situation. “Angsty White Boy Polka”, “I Was Only Kidding”, also work.
Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” is, uh, obviously about the creepier segment of people.
Ministry’s “My Possession” is kind of obvious too.
Sister Machine Gun’s “Closer to Me” and Alice Cooper’s “Might as Well Be on Mars” are good for those creepy entitled stares-really-too-long-for-comfort dudes.
Hugs to everyone who wants them. Hang in there and take care of yourselves.
Kat: Ugh, I’m sorry you’re still having so much trouble with your stepson’s mom. People who can’t keep a schedule are an enormous pain under any circumstance and I can only imagine how that problem compounds when there’s a child involved.
Still, I’m glad that he ends up spending so much time with you and, even more importantly, less time with his awful mom.
Can I ask what you all think of this article: http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5898187/prostitution-rhode-island-decriminalized
Statistics show that “forcible rape offenses fell by 31 percent in Rhode Island from 2004 to 2009” after indoor sex work was decriminalized. The article doesn’t insist that there’s causation here, but it’s pretty heavily implied: “With prostitution legally acceptable and cheaper than when it was a criminal offense, would-be rapists might shift away from violence toward women, opting to purchase sex instead.”
Did anyone mention that Hot Child in the City song yet? Given the obsession these guys have with underage girls it’s fitting.
By the way, I had plenty of fun with this article: http://the-toast.net/2014/07/15/the-ocean-is-full-of-worms-and-gonads/
And I confess that I did stare at the picture of “penis lizard” for a long, long, long while. Nature is truly wonderful… and weird.
Welcome, TheVitulus. This is a caring group of people.
Adding more hugs to anyone who wants one!
bunnybunny, About that Rhode Island study, to me it just really brings home the issue that we need to make sure that no one is doing sex work because they are economically or physically coerced into it — that it is freely chosen work (as much as any of us freely choose our work in a capitalist system, anyway). Otherwise I look at that study and think, “Are we forcing poor women to have sex with rapists to spare (some of) the rest of us?” And it kind of makes my skin crawl.
The misters are, of course, all over that study, with their usual (a) complete and total lack of regard for the health and safety of sex workers, and (b) assumptions that feminists who are critical of the actual living practice of sex work are so because we don’t want the “competition.”
More ick.
Thanks for the responses. Came down to visit my dad last month for an indefinite period of time and it’s been difficult. I’m actually on academic probation in the fall, so I won’t be going back to school, but I don’t want to be here, so I’m not exactly sure where I’ll go. I’ve stayed with my partner and her parents before, but they — or at least her dad — been kinda hinting that they don’t want me doing that anymore, so I dunno. It’s been stressful and I’ve just kinda been escaping into minecraft all day so that I don’t have to deal with shit. This, of course, has given my dad more shit to throw at me. “Why are you in your room all day?” “You should be exercising more!” Whatever.
@TheVitulus
When I used to live at my dad’s place, I often stayed in my room by myself. It was my safe space because I knew that there was a high possibility of him screaming at me and berating me for not being an obedient “son”. And he would also berate me for being “fat” and not exercising enough. All of this was heavily traumatizing to me to the point that I have developed PTSD. I’m not equating your situation to mine, but I can relate and I’m so sorry you have to deal with such a father.
I can also relate to your anxiety about where to stay in the future. After I ran away from my dad’s place, I went to my step-dad’s place, and he made me do all kinds of intensive farm labor for him even though I was terrible at it. And he would constantly put me down for being lazy. I was also blamed for putting financial strain on the family, which was true, but also hurtful to hear. I eventually left and now I’m living with some trans friends of mine.
Speaking of that, there’s this Tumblr called the Transgender Housing Network that is there to help trans people find housing and help people with housing advertise it for trans people. Perhaps it could be of some help to you.
@Bunnybunny: If numbers really fell that low after indoor sex work was decriminalized, it seems much more plausible that the rapists nowadays prefer to rape sex workers since they figure that there’s hardly any risk of getting caught that way, no one’s gonna believe a sex worker who charges someone with rape etc, rather than raping other women – not that they magically stopped being rapists.
The idea that men become rapists because of sexual frustration, and allowing them to buy sex makes them nice again, is just… SO much wrong.
Sorry, was too quick to reply. The article mentions alternative hypotheses too, like maybe sex workers have better security now so it’s more difficult to rape. And they don’t say that rapists used to rape because of sexual frustration. So, made an angry response before properly reading the article, sorry.
I think one major reason for the decline in rape is that, since sex work is decriminalized, sex workers are less afraid of reporting their rape to the police. I doubt that sex workers have a good chance of getting justice because there is still institutional bias heavily stacked against them, but surely an increased proclivity to report does to some extent increase the chances of serial rapists being caught.
Oh, I mean to post the MR take on that Rhode Island study — they actually talked about it twice:
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2azhdm/when_rhode_island_accidentally_legalized/
and
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2b275r/when_rhode_island_accidentally_legalized/
Sure, that is true. All of that, I mean – we are not your therapists and we are not responsible for your well-being. Nor is it this neccesarily the forum that will, in the end, grant you the most optimal means to make your life as you want it to be, but, in all honesty
so fucking what?
It’s an open thread, and I, for one (and more than one with the others above mirroring the sentiment) welcome you to be open in this open thread with the things in your head and the way you happen to feel. Something just writing stuff out is exactly what you need, and if we can provide that then that is great and you are welcome to talk the talky talk.
Depression is rough.
Especially rough when you go through the mental samba routine of telling yourself: “Wait, I shouldn’t be depressed, look at my awesome life, it’s awesome, other people have it way worse than me, why am I feeling so pathetic? That’s pathetic! I’m so pathetic for being this pathetic and…” on and on and on it goes etcetera infinity.
I know because that happens to me. I keep a journal. I can quote myself going through that exact process repeatedly. I won’t, on account of not wanting to splurge all over this thread. But I know that mental train of thought very well, and often wonder how to derail the cargo transport of misery headed straight for self esteem station. Or… something. Honestly this metaphor kind of ran off the tracks for me now. I de-railed myself, you might say.
( Okay that was bad )
Anyway, let me just find my track of thought so I can arrive at some cogent conclusion in relation to all the above.
—-
I remember an odd sensation some time ago, the details of which are insignificant, but which can best be summed up as the fact that I had all the logical rational reasonable reasons in the world to feel great, and even more reasons that were neither logical, reasonable, rational or particularly sane to feel even better and… I just didn’t. The best thing I could do with it was make a half attempt at telling someone I knew that “You know, I don’t feel all that… anything. I don’t really feel anything. It’s a bit odd”. Sometimes that goes away these days, sometimes it doesn’t.
Depression is rough. It’s okay. It’s an open thread. Tell us what you want to tell us, if there’s anything you want to talk about.
Oh, you forgot the real good one in this line:
Right, I didn’t mean to say that the article was only offering that one explanation (although the substitution hypothesis was arguably given the most attention).
@cloudiah: Wow, great commentary as always from the MR subreddit. MRAs think that feminists are opposed to the legalization of sex work? Huh.