Various things have put the idea of deserving into my mind, and I thought I’d explore it a little tonight.

The main one was this webcomic :

(I recommend Depression Comix for everyone who is a depressive or knows one. Trigger warning, though. Obviously. It looks unflinchingly and honestly at what it is like to be a depressive. It can be harsh. )

The comic really struck a chord in me, or rather, the absence of one, because I don’t really think in those terms at all. I have no idea what I “deserve” and it’s honestly never been a major component of my depression. And yet, I know a lot of people think like the poor woman in the comic, and that makes me feel very bad for them, but it also makes me wonder why I don’t.

The obvious answer would be religion. I was raised without it. The entire concept of God’s favour (or rage) is bizarre to me. And I think that goes deeper than just whether or not you go to church or pray before you go to bed. I think a lack of religion gives you a fundamentally different relationship with life than people raised with belief. It’s hard to measure what you deserve or do not deserve when there is no celestial arbiter somewhere to carry out the verdict.

And so for me, the question “What do I deserve?” has always drawn a blank response. I have no idea what I do or do not deserve, and it has never seemed like a particularly interesting or relevant question to me.

Who knows, maybe I deserve the world, maybe I deserve absolutely nothing, not even life. Either way, there’s nobody to set things right and make sure everyone gets what they deserve, so what difference does it make?

That’s not to say I have no problems with self-loathing or low self esteem. My problems with both have been historically quite catastrophic. It’s just that I don’t really see it in those justice oriented terms, like, at all.

(As an aside, I think there’s two kinds of people in the world : those who react to the statement “Today you will get what you deserve” by saying “Finally!”, and the ones who say “Oh God, no!”)

But that might not be the boon it sounds. Granted, I am not tormented by thoughts of being a filthy sinner headed straight to Hell or feelings that I don’t deserve what I have, but that might come from the fact that I don’t think I deserve anything at all and don’t even think I can move to a place where I do.

I’m not saying that is the case. Like I said, for the most part, the whole question is alien to me. But it is possible that because I have had so little opportunity to earn things in my life that it may be that I don’t feel like I deserve anything in an absolute sense. Because really, what have I done to earn it?

My life has been very passive. In general, when good things happen, it’s as though they just fall from the sky. I am always happy and grateful for the good fortune, but that is all it is to me : good luck. Even when people go out of their way to do something nice for me, it still feels like good luck to me, not something I earned.

I am trying to imagine how I would feel if I was the sudden recipient of great fortune. Would I feel like I deserved it? Would I feel humbled by it? Would I be suffused with gratitude (to who?) or would I feel self-conscious and undeserving?

I think the answer to all those questions is “yes”. It would all be in there somewhere.

How about great misfortune? That I can answer. I would feel bitter. Really fucking bitter. Because it’s not like life has been wonderful to me so far. It would seem grossly unfair to me for life to become a whole lot worse. If that happened, I would become very bitter and morose and maybe even misanthropic.

So I guess there must be a sense of what I deserve somewhere inside me, because I certainly don’t think that I deserve to have life get shittier for me. I am barely hanging on as it is.

On my better days, I do feel like I deserve an opportunity to earn mad cash with my mad skills. I could make the right people a hell of a lot of money and I think I have a lot to offer the world with all my talents and smarts and so forth.

On my worse days… that is just too painful a thought. It is easier, for a person like me, to shelve the entire concept of deserving than it is to live with the feeling that life has been horribly unfair to me and that I deserve more.

Thinking I deserve better is a healthy thought, I admit. And I wish I could hold on to it better. But such positive, wholesome, healthy thoughts are like girls entering an all male environment to me : they feel really out of place, they are liable to leave almost as soon as they have arrived, and they can only really survive if there is enough of them together.

The thing is, I know I have a lot to offer the world. The problem is that I have no faith in my capacity to actually connect all my potential to a way to express it in the wider world. That deep down passivity keeps me that way. I try to imagine a way out of this cramped little box I live in, but option paralysis and feelings of incompetence always rise up to stifle me.

Maybe I should spend all my time looking for an agent. I dunno.

All I know is that I think I probably deserve better, but I doubt I will ever get it.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.