So I did it. I wrote an entire blog entry summarizing all the good things about me. No backpedaling, no minimizing, no negating, just a thousand words of all the good things about me.

And objectively speaking, it is a pretty impressive list. I am truly blessed with a great number of gifts. A lot of people would give their right arms to be half as gifted as I am.

But the list was very painful for me to write, as I suspected it would be. It goes against the entire grain of my warped psyche to praise myself and so instead of being a joyful and heartening experience that unlocked a galaxy of self-worth and emotional stability for me, it felt more like digging shrapnel out of my numb and tortured flesh with a rusty old hunting knife

But hey, I knew it would not be easy. But it was worth it, right? I now have this blog entry I can go back to when I am feeling down on myself and need a reminder that I am actually a pretty awesome person.

That is undoubtedly true. But it’s not how I feel. The exercise has instead left me feeling more hollow than before and it has really highlight a fundamental truth of life.

Emotions can lie. I proved to myself with the blog entry that I have a lot of talent and potential, but just like when I was a kid, that news just makes me even sadder.

Why? Why can’t I let the truth of my good points sink into my frozen, broken heart? Why do I feel colder and more empty inside than before I wrote it? What the hell is wrong with me?

I cannot argue that I wrote lies yesterday. Everything I wrote was true. So objectively speaking, I should be quite happy with myself and have no reason to be depressed or sad. And certainly not reason to hate myself.

But my emotions continue to lie to me. They tell me I am worthless and awful and toxic. After all, if that is how I feel, that is how I must be, right? What else do we have to shore up our self worth but emotions, in the end? No matter how smart you are, you are still a lonely, scared beach ape like the rest of us and all the intelligence in the world can’t keep you warm in the dead of night when you are alone with yourself.

That is where faith is supposed to come in, and I have none.

Some days I don’t even believe in reality.

And the very idea that our emotions can lie to us on such a fundamental level is downright obscene. And terrifying, because now how clever us baked beach apes get, we still experience reality on a fundamentally emotional basis. Our feeling guide us, our intellect only informs us.

Emotion is always king. Intellect advises but it is always emotion that makes the call in the end.

So if something that fundamental it our existence can lie to us, can tell us something is true when it is clearly and demonstrably wrong (and vice versa), what chance to any of us really have?

I am telling you, I think I truly understand all those people who just keep on believing things after they are amply demonstrated to be untrue.

Sure, their way of looking at the world might not be the one best aligned with objective reality, but by continuing to go with their gut and believe whatever their emotions tell them, they at least avoid (strenuously) any inner conflict between reality and emotions. They do not have to face this bitter truth.

Your emotions can lie to you and make you believe unhappy things which are not true. I want to believe in myself, but my chemicals won’t let me.

And that makes me really understand, really feel, how insane I am.

It is actually painful to think about my good points. Every asset that I have is perverted into another reason to hate myself by my dark chemicals.

Look at you, with all that talent and all that intelligence, just sitting their wasting your potential playing video games and fucking around online all day!

And so I never think about my good points. Hating myself is actually easier than dealing with that painful split between emotion and reality. Deep down, all my assets make me do is say “Who cares? None of it makes me happy. It just makes me a bigger idiot for not using my assets at all. ”

It’s like living in poverty when you have a million dollars in the bank just because you think you are no good with money, and can’t decide what to spend it on first.

Logic and common sense would dictate that being an amazing dude would be enough to make anyone happy. But logic and common sense break down when dealing with depression. We depressives have a giant, heavy thumb constantly pressing down on “sad” side of the happy/sad scale, and against that, intellect struggles in vain.

Sometimes your only hope is to feel your way out of the darkness.

So that’s the scoop on me. I know my self-loathing is unjustified, and I have a feeling that a lot of you would agree. I am a sweet, smart, funny, sensitive, kindly, warmhearted fellow and that should be enough for anybody.

But all my chemicals will let me think about is how clumsy and helpless and vulnerable I feel and that just makes me more scared of the world than ever because fundamentally I just plain can’t handle it. It’s all well and good to be a mental wizard if you have someone in your life to take care of the world outside the mind for you, but I don’t.

You turn into an adult whether you are ready or not. And I was not.

Telling you all the good things about myself made me feel cold and hollow. Telling you just how bad I feel has actually made me feel a little better.

And how fucked up is that?