You know, I think I have been doing myself a disservice by imagining my finally coming out of my cave as this big dramatic decisive transformational moment.
That’s too many adjectives. Whatever.
You get the idea. Like at some point, I am going to throw off my shackles, kick open the door, and stride purposefully out of the drab and dingy darkness and into the warmth and joy of open sunlight, clean air, and soft green meadows.
For a while, I just stand there and bask in the warmth of the sun, letting it dry me out and cleanse me all over[1] and feeling the soft breeze on my skin and smelling the fresh clean odors of grass and flowers and running water.
Then I square my jaw and my shoulders, set my eyes on yonder horizon, and walk off into the sunset, and destiny.
That was a lot of fun to write.
My point, however, is that while it might happen like that, it doesn’t have to. It can happen in timid little baby steps gradually over time, too.
Imagine a timid, skittish little mouse who only comes out of his mousehole to eat and poop and spends the rest of his time at his tiny PC playing video games.
Spoiler : The mouse is me.
Slowly, very slowly, over time, he spends more and more time in the world outside his mousehole, giving himself plenty of time to get used to new levels of exposure before venturing further out.
It might take him a long time but eventually he can lead a full mousy life.
Yeah, but he’s sick and won’t live long enough to escape that way.
I think the dramatic exit scenario is fun to think about and would be very satisfying, but depression is extremely sneaky, and one of the dirtiest and most devious ways it has of sabotaging you so it can have you all to itself is to get you fixated on a dream that will never happen instead of taking the more boring and practical steps that will work.
Once you start preferring dreams and imagination over reality, the rot sets in. Instead of learning to deal with things, you learn to avoid and escape them, and that leads to being too weak and feeble to cope with even basic things, and then you escape even harder and distance yourself from reality even further, and things get worse and worse.
And then one day, you realize that you are 48, riddled with disease, and unlikely to have the time, health, or resources to finally get around to having a life any time soon.
No one told you when you run. You missed the starting gun.
Sooner or later, it will be time to take a kamikaze run at life and throw everything you’ve got into trying to meet someone or do something or go somewhere.
Anything. Anywhere. As long as it takes me away from here.
But do it soon, because you might not have that much time left.
At some point, it will be just me on the roof of a burning building, knowing that I have to jump or I will die in the fire.
I wish I could say I am sure I will choose to jump.
But I might just choose to die instead.
Because dying’s easier.
More after the break.
Easier, not better
Let’s kick this can around the block again.
What an unnecessarily violent image.
One of the most pervasive effects of depression is what I call the “anti-action bias”. It makes one hate effort. The chemical imbalance in the brain means that the signals that are supposed to lead to doing things are not strong enough to result in action, and depressed people like me feel this as a kind of overpowering resistance to action.
Life with the parking brake on, more or less.
And that means that we don’t invest effort into anything but the most high reward to effort ratio activities because only they can sufficiently reward us for the amount of effort we have to put in to do anything.
We don’t get nearly as much pleasure as healthy people do from literally anything.
It’s called “anhedonia” and it fucking sucks.
Hence our tendency to just do whatever is easiest.
Even if it’s terrible. Even if we know it is wrong. Even if we are fully aware that it is highly destructive to our long term self interests.
Even if it means we die.
Because no future consequences can make that dopamine appear. Adrenaline can compensate for the lack of dopamine for a while – perhaps that’s why so many of us depressives also have anxiety.
Perhaps some part of us is overcompensating.
But that only lasts as long as the fear lasts, and once our bloodstreams return to their (possibly terrible) baselines, the rust sets in again and we’re back to doing only the safest and most rewarding things we know.
Like, for instance, playing video games all day.
They are my refuge, as I have said before. While I have a game going and something cool to listen to playing on YouTube, all my depression and anxiety are crowded out of my mind and I can relax and be kinda sorta happy.
Or at least pain free.
The problem with always doing whatever is easiest is that getting better requires doing a lot of hard things. Things you don’t want to do, won’t enjoy, and which will always pale in comparison to whatever high reward activity or substance on which you have fixated.
To get better I have to leave my video game refuge and face reality naked of its shelter and protection and comfort.
And I don’t wanna.
It’s really scary out there.
It’s so much easier to just let everything continue to slide into the crapper. After all, I’m used to it. Things have been falling apart for a long time. That’s my “normal”. Why should I change what has “worked” for me for so long?
This is fine.
Time to learn to work harder than I have to.
I still don’t wanna.
But I’m gonna.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.