I hate to be the old dude in these conversations — but yeah… sometimes you just fucking deal. 90% of my life is depression, suicidal ideation, and intrusive thoughts. Ten percent is that I’m the life of the party, the fun guy at work. Honestly, in meetings, when it’s been dark, execs turn to me and say, “Wow, silver lining?”
And I deliver.
So… I don’t complain. I raise a family. I exercise. I see depression as the norm. Why would I think anything else if it is all I have ever known?
And yet of course there are the brief moments of satisfaction when I am doing service for others — which is how I see my work, which makes my life meaningful.
Cure for depression? Ain’t one. But there is service, which is the cure for meaninglessness.
People are generally missing service in their lives. Thanks for the comment, from another old guy.
You can get meds for this. If you’re on them and this is where you’re at, I’m sorry. But I was like you. I could function.
Then I needed meds for something else, and they stuck me on Wellbutrin, which can be perscribed to address depression or my other issue.
I came back to the doc and she asked if it had helped with my other problem. “Nope, but can I stay on?”
“Why?”
“Uh, turns out wanting to be hit by a bus isn’t normal, and I had just assumed it was, and had no idea I was dealing with that constant mental hellhole until it went away.”
She let me stay on the Wellbutrin.
Hmm… yeah, you can tell I’m skeptical of the chemical solutions.
I’m of an age where tracking my own hormonal changes is hard enough without adding any variables. But I appreciate your thoughtful recommendation. And I’m absolutely delighted you know longer deal with the whole sudden impulse to fall in front of a bus. I’ve never jumped but the thought comes… it’s comfortable now I guess. I don’t know who I’d be without it.
I wish I had a family, maybe life would be worth living.
You can make a family with friends and neighbors and helping out some organizations/volunteers doing things you care about. As you surround yourself with folks who share your interests, the family aspect takes shape.
Yea maybe I should try that
Where are you doing service?
I’m sorry, I couldn’t understand what you mean by “service”, English is not my native language. I’m not in the army or religiously celibate, I was just given a pretty bad hand of card by life. Too dumb to find a good job, too ugly to find a wife.
By “service” they probably mean something closer to “community service”: volunteering to help out your community and the people in need around you. Many people find it quite fulfilling.
Oh, I see. Thank you for explaining
During the pandemic quarantine, I took up the guitar, but unlike most Covid hobbies, I’ve stuck with it, and gotten pretty good.
Getting good at something difficult results in great feelings, as you can imagine, but I wasn’t prepared for how much better it made me feel. My self-esteem and confidence went through the roof, and made me realize that I’ve probably been operating under a low-grade depression for my entire life.
Sometimes we’re depressed and don’t even know it. You come to accept that it’s just how you feel, and that’s your life. You don’t even know it can be better, until it is.
I took my adhd assessment and was diagnosed with the trifecta, adhd, anxiety and depression. I knew I was a bit below neutral but I didn’t think it was a problem because I was still able to be happy given the right situation. I’m now medicated for adhd and I wish I had looked into it earlier in life, I felt the warm and fuzzies when hugging my son the other day… that’s when I realized it had been years since I had felt it, not every day is great but I have more good days than I used to.
Congrats on sticking to it. Getting out of that rut.
Ive been a horrific introvert through most of my 20s. Met someone with similar interests, for once, and now it doesn’t feel like such a chore. Gone to do more in 6 months than in 20 years.
Humans can get use to anything and call it normal.
It’s a generational thing. Your dad’s generation didn’t talk about mental health, so there was no such thing as mental health. If you had serious depression, you were just weak and grumpy. All you could do about depression was soldier through it. Now we talk about it and it’s more accepted. Now we actually try to tackle the problems of mental health instead of tucking it away.
TL;DR blue did not exist to some people. It still does not in some cultures to some degree. Want more tangible evidence? Torquoise. How many can properly name this color?
What I am getting at. If people lack cultural, vocabulary properties, some things will never even occur to them.
This is the reality of what sapir-whorf was guessing at. The way it’s defined is incorrect IIRC, but the real heart of it I think stemmed from this kind of reality of distinction.
The fact people think it’s normal and don’t realize it’s not, especially once they get older simply being unwilling to think otherwise…yeah.
What if all we have done is turn it into an epidemic?
Find patient zero and kill them.
I think it’s highly likely genetic in this example.
Can depression be genetic?
Now we talk about it and it’s more accepted.
That sounds like soldiering through it with extra steps.
And proffesional guidance, tools, medication, support and understanding from your environment and and you can recognition so you can use the social safety nets your country provides.
This is the drawer where I keep my various lengths of wire, and this is the compartment where I keep my crippling depression, fears, and anxiety. For the fucking love of satan don’t open that up, I try to forget it exists. The last time I opened it up, it nearly ate me.
No, I’m fine, why do you ask?
At least the crippling depression isn’t mixed up with the wire. A functional organisation system isn’t a substitute for a will to live, but an inability to find the right tools would certainly not help
Edit: I am also extremely fine, and I am wishing us both all the best on that front; I hope that some day, you are able to be better than fine.
Shut the drawer and carry on, it’s a super power.
How do you operate so well in a crisis? I’ve been in crisis mode for 37 years, take the best path and move forward.
“You get used to it”
Narrator:
“You never actually get used to it.”Eh, I’m pretty used to it.
Narrator: "That’s a lie…
I have become
Comfortably numb
Yeah, that’s not depression, that’s just normal. 🤷♂️
Just like the opposite of addiction is not sobriety but connection, so the opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality.
Because that is what most depression saps out of people - the vitality to do things, to live life, and to give your own life meaning and the strength to forge ahead.
Sometimes people can handle depression on their own. Most of the time, however, help of some sort of help or assistance is needed. Never be afraid or let yourself be shamed for reaching out or accepting help, because we all need help once in a while. As the Good Captain once said, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.”
And while uncultivated ignorance can still be educated away, beware cultivated ignorance – these people are maliciously ignorant, and are intentionally trying to hurt you.
That isn’t normal?
It’s okay. Everything will be ok. I love you, man 💞
Some forms of depression are genetic, so this is “common” but constant suicide ideation is not “normal, functioning, or healthy.”
I do have some light form of depression at some constant rate, but never suicidal ideation.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation… A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things…”
― Henry David Thoreau
What book is that from?
This comes from the introduction to “Walden, or, Life in the Woods”, in which the author gets fed up with modern (1840s) society and fucks off to the woods of Massachusetts for a little over 2 years. During this time he attempted to be fully self-reliant, building his residence from the ground up and eating only what he could hunt or gather. It is emblematic of the American transcendentalism movement, which emphasized connection with nature, self-reliance, and intuitive knowledge of truth. It was, in essence, the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance of its day, if you’re aware of that book.
I read it in high school and I did not think much of it at that time. I think, perhaps, it would find more fertile ground in my thoughts now, were I to revisit it. Certainly in the decades since first reading it, I’ve become more sympathetic to the idea of pissing off to the woods and minding my own business until I expire.
Can confirm, fucking off from society helps.
Wife and I moved from city life to a rural area with more deer than people back in 2021. In terms of well being, the peace and nature are incredible. I never want to live in a city again.
Couldn’t completely piss off to the woods since we still need groceries, doctor, mechanic, etc., but it’s been rural enough and nobody bothers us. Now I only go into town every 5 or 6 weeks for necessities and get out as quickly as I can. I’ve become something of a hermit, but happier for it.
Man, you and I have seriously different takes on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance :)
I’m fully on board with self reliance and DIY, but that guy was constantly insufferable to his family and friends just to try to make the point :)
I was reading it and it just annoyed me so I moved over to the audiobook as I often do if I feel I have a bad take on a read, it just made it worse :)
Could very well be. Similarly to Walden, I read it for school, and did not much care for it. One of the few concrete points I remember being discussed was a comparison between a character that rides a rickety old bike, but knows how to keep it running, and the character who rides a new bike, but relies on mechanics when things do inevitably break on it. That sort of rumination on a man who can fix things being happier than a man who can’t is basically the entire premise of Walden.
Furthermore, in refreshing my memory of what subjects Prisig touched upon, I see/vaguely remember his attempts to reconcile rational empiricism with intuitive understanding, which is also very Thoreau.
However, as I’ve said, I didn’t particularly enjoy my brush with either text, and it’s been 15+ years since I last looked through either. So, it’s entirely possible that they are actually philosophical polar opposites and my C- in Philosophy 101 was well earned.
I didn’t doubt that’s where Prisig was going with it. He just made the character so uninviting, conceited, and self centered that the message itself seemed to get lost. It felt like I was watching a movie where I hated the main character.
Yes, I also really struggled with his writing style. It felt like he was layering in additional degrees of obfuscation by creating meta-characters and framing his philosophical points in the form of fictionalized conversations from this road trip he took. Like, bud, you’re already talking about abstracted concepts like Platonic Good. Do we REALLY need more abstraction?
To which Prisig, author of the most (financially) successful book on philosophy in America, would say, “Evidently, yes.”
At least Thoreau came by his difficult to parse writing style honestly, being a product of the 19th century and all.
That sounds romantc. If whoever said that was around today, they might see that the male loneliness epidemic is just a bunch of incel adjacents cowards crying about how society needs to sexually validate them.
Yikes
Loneliness != wanting sex.
Although I do agree that the “male loneliness epidemic” is a bit of a manufactured narrative.
Get it? The punchline is having no will to live! Hahaha …
I don’t think that’s a joke or a punchline.
The joke? Life! Haha! 🤣😭
Imagine wanting to be alive. Hilarious
Damn, that was horrible.
I’m the dad and you’re gay, son
It’s ok 2 b gay
There are two types of gays, actually.
It’s ok to be the first type, but to be 4chan gay is not okay. Just as to be 4chan straight, 4chan bi or 4chan whatever is not ok.
what about ex-4chan?
You mean cured gays? They’re the best kind of gays
“oh that’s how I’ve felt my whole life”
Fake: Anon’s dad returned to the family home after “going out for some smokes”
Gay: Anon shares repressed feelings with another man
One day, I will most likely have this exact conversation with my kids.
Why bring them onto this world then?
We actually thought about this a lot when we found out we were having kids. The thought process went kinda like to this:
throughout my life time I’ve often wished for death in both active and passive ways. I thought about my lot, my future and did not have the will to continue. Even through this, there were many moments and times that I have to admit I was enjoying myself. There were good times, and the hope of future good times to come is what drove me to continue.
Now that I am older, fully settled into the adult life that my choices have brought me to, my hopefulness and optimism of the future has been thoroughly crushed, and the strong wish for an end was back but this time without the means to combat it, we found out we were having kids.
The kids are blank slates, full of possibilities, full of unknowns. There are lots of people in the world, all with different experiences and different outlooks on life. Even though I am pretty much done caring about my experience, there is a small possibility that our kids will end up with a fulfilling adulthood. I happen to be fortunate to be in a position where I can provide a house, in a neighborhood with other kids their age, with people I trust. I can provide a better childhood experience than I had, and give to them things I wish I had. Should they fail to hit that tiny possibility for a satisfying adulthood, they can at least enjoy the path to get there.
It’s not easy for me, money is tight, work situation is tenuous, uncertain, and I live on the brink of collapse every day, but if I can do it, I can at least take my miserable life and use it for giving something great to my successors, even if it ends for them, the same way as has for me.
Journey before destination.
This is why I’m adopting if I ever decide with my wife to be parents. Can’t imagine the guilt of my DNA looking me in the eye and asking why “did you make me?”
Look straight back and say, “cause your mum wanted to get rawdogged and forgot her birth control pills”.
“…and your dad refused to get a vasectomy” which is easy and reversible and quick-recovery
I know so many well meaning people who have said exactly this
Until the pregnancy test. And then they’re like “Let’s fucking DO it! We’ll be parents!!”
I know better than to add misery to the system.
Honestly, this is why I started smoking. Didn’t stop until I had kids. Don’t smoke tobacco, kids. It’s whacko.
