just depression

So, I've realized that I hate my circumstances, I hate my life, I hate what I've become. Take away all the excuses and stories I've told myself all these years, and essentially, I hate myself. I hate the world for making me feel this way. I'm drowning in a sea of negativity and all anyone can tell me is that I should regret all this negativity, too.

And I wonder, is this how I've always felt? Have I exposed this ugly rot at the very foundation of my existence, or am I just so depressed, I'm putting a negative spin on my entire life? I talk about my medical condition and how it impacted my childhood, but what we know about self-esteem is that goes back further than that. It develops during early childhood and has more to do with relations and behaviors of caregivers, shading everything that happens afterwards.

I've spent my entire life begging the world to save me from this, but the world doesn't do that sort of thing. My whole life has been nothing but failure and misery. I can't lie to myself about that anymore. I'm trying to pull it together to get back to the gym, but how much does that even matter when I always end up back here. It's the only positive thing I've ever done, and it's been increasingly difficult to keep doing it. If only I had someone to go with, blah blah blah.

The last few years have been horrific, and I hate that instead of demonstrating any resilience or wisdom, I've only crumpled. It's not my fault, because this, because that, but it is what it is, I am what I am, and I fucking hate it.

Then I got to the gym. Maybe writing helps. My knee is fine. All puffy and weird, but relatively fine. My back is fine. The inflammation in my neck is 99.7% gone. My wrists hurt. All this is frustrating, but I got to the gym, it was fine, and I feel a lot better. It's a great painkiller, but painkillers tend to wear off.

I'm torn between listing all these valid reasons for feeling bad about myself, and thinking it's got nothing to do with any of that. It's a childhood development issue. I may have an entirely valid list, but so do lots of people. Life is rough for a lot of the world, and we tend to suck at dealing with that. This isn't to make excuses, but to point out that we're supposed to have self-esteem anyhow. Some people really are hated by everyone, and still feel ok about themselves. Why? Because that's how the brain is supposed to work.

commodities

I used to think that I like myself, and that was basically self-esteem. For years, I'd mull over the contradictions of thinking I like myself even if I have no worth to others. It didn't seem to add up.

What did I like about myself? What does it mean to like myself? I would read my blog, agree with my past proclamations, admire my choice of words. I'd like who that person seems to be. I might even argue that it's longwinded rambling about ourselves that best covers who we are. I wasn't sure what to make of the reality that this isn't a version of me that other people see at all. The people I meet out in the world haven't read my blog. By a fairly overwhelming margin, they don't want to.

The self is not a real objective thing. It's a trick of perspective, generally thought about in terms of looking for our own, but who we are is no less the behavior we exhibit around other people. People who don't think about who we are as separate from our circumstances. If someone has no legs, we don't think of them as who they'd be, with legs. When we consider ourselves, we might think this isn't me, this is just my circumstances. When we consider someone else, it's all the same. It's not your fault if you don't have legs, but it is what it is.

To assess the value or worth of something is not to measure an intrinsic quality, but how much weight it carries in a transaction. This requires interactions between people, and means nothing on its own. Self-worth is not a question of whether we like ourselves, but of whether we expect to be valued. Not necessarily liked, but valued.

To some extent, self-worth is a rational calculation we can try to make in any given situation, but it's also a core component of the human psyche. The person who expects the world to bend over backwards for them has an overinflated sense of self-worth. The less what we want matters, the less motivated we'll be to do much of anything, but escape. When we assess how much it matters what we want or need, and how much should be done to accommodate that, it's an assessment of how much we matter. 

I've always tried to be humble. I'm fine. I want nothing. Leave me alone to inexplicably wither away.

the missing piece

I have to be very careful about gaming. Selective about when I pick up a new title. What kind of game is it. I might stop caring about everything else for a while. Used selectively enough, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it mostly is. I've thought a lot about why gaming in particular, comparing it to other vices and interests. It's not simply an addiction or an escape. There's something more specific that hooks a certain type.

I'm an "achievement" type player to a great extent. That is, I'm most drawn to playing a game in which my character is always getting stronger, progressing in some way themselves, not just passing through a game world or story. I like games that start out ridiculously difficult, but I get to the point where I can walk around their fantastical hellscapes pretty safely, with no more challenges to grow stronger overcoming. The game loses something, and I return to reality, having achieved nothing at all.

Aforementioned feelings of learned hopelessness are all about achievement. It's the feeling there's nothing I can do that's going to get me anywhere. To be obsessed with a game is to be starved for feelings of achievement. Gaming can be especially addictive for the type of people who feel hopeless about making any progress in their own lives. So unlike real life, games promise progress. Just play them and you'll get somewhere. 

What can I achieve in life? Why did I stop doing any kind of art or music? Never striving for anything academically or vocationally or socially or anything at all ever? 

Nothing felt like an achievement. Thus, no achievement seemed possible. Nothing I did would be of any value to anyone. Nothing I strive for will matter.

There's a logical chain to it, but I'm still just trying to put the pieces together. My life's work of trying to figure out why my brain doesn't work. I've long compared it to feeling incomplete, like a car in which the wheels are not connected to the engine. The drive shaft, should I say? The metal turnie thingies? I don't know cars very well, but I understand that everything has to be causally connected. Engines don't turn wheels just because they really want to.

I hesitate to even volunteer help for people, for fear that the help from me would be unwanted. I'd be inept, in the way, whatever the framing, nothing I do will be of value to anyone. Applying for a job means tricking someone into thinking they'd want to hire me. An endeavor, like all endeavors, I'm sure to fail at. I don't know why I feel that way, but it makes some sense to me that it could be the sort of missing piece needed to make the wheels turn.

It's like the reward axis manifests on a psychological level. The psychological characteristics may be more immutable than they should be, if they're the product of an underlying neurochemistry, brewed by the interplay of environment and biology. This is why we can be aware that we feel a given way, and that it's problematic or even wrong, while being unable to choose feeling differently. It's not that simple.

Yet, other people seem to go about their lives as if they're in a video game, in which if you want to do something, you go do it. If something makes sense, act on it. Doesn't matter that they mostly fail every which way and very little they do makes sense, if a person's sense of self-worth is functioning properly. 

That the missing piece would be one's own sense of self-worth just seems obvious now. Mine's been crudely stitched together with delusions of exceptionalism my entire life. Twice exceptional, even. I'm not sure how to actually fix it. One might say I've learned that I'm helpless to do so. Maybe I am. 

learned hopelessness

 I remember this line I scrawled in my journal, when I was a kid. More anarchist than communist in those days, it went something like, fuck their games, fuck their rules, I'd sooner lose than play with fools. 

I was full of ideas as to how things should be, which is fine and all, but if only I could have been convinced to accept that this is the world we live in. We only have a short time to make the most of it. It seems crazy to openly admit to preferring to throw it away over some sort of ideological pride. Almost on par with holding my breath until they give us communism.

I don't know how much value to place in all that, when I realize that it was all just this post facto rationalization thing the brain does. It may have some truth to it, but the underlying rationale had more to do with learned hopelessness. I wasn't like other kids. I was never going to have a life like theirs. I'd often feel enraged about it. It wasn't fair. 

All the more confusing, because I never really knew what made me different. My intelligence, my sensitivity, a more highly tuned sense of ethics? Hmm, that sounds suspiciously cliché, honestly. Was it that other kids treated me like I was different my entire childhood, when I was years behind them all developmentally? I wasn't bullied, I just wasn't one of them. I had no peers. Maybe that has a way of imprinting on a person's sense of self.

Always refusing to adapt, proudly standing my ground, because I deeply believed it was not a challenge I could conceivably overcome. If people didn't value me, they could fuck off. That seems reasonable on some level, and yet.. maybe put some thought and effort into doing something valuable? That was literally inconceivable to me. I don't know what I'd have to do, but it would never work. Even the things I am best at, I expect no one to value. Incidentally, this is fundamentally terrible for motivation.

Other aspects of my childhood sure didn't help with that mindset. Maybe I'll always feel different due to development back then, but now I'm also different because people don't know what it's like to scrape by like Gollum their entire lives. Nobody wants in on this, not even me. I'm honestly not sure if I'm still that tiny little kid in junior high, telling everyone to fuck off preemptively - or if they still treat me like I'm different, and I'm just reacting to that.

Social efforts have been feeling rather hopeless though. Going to a picnic made me want to crawl into a hole for a month.

anatomy of misanthropy

 As the prospect of overcoming mental health problems grows an ever more distant memory, I can see the anatomy of the isolation and misanthropy that develops. Being around people makes me feel inferior. They don't frame it that way for the most part, but on all different levels, the lack of interest or enthusiasm for anything, the hesitance to express anything, discombobulated and anxious, I don't work or drive and pay for my food with food stamps. I'm not an independent grown-up like they are. My value as a fellow human being seems to be in the gutter. 

I protected myself from that my entire life by distancing myself from it. Fuck it all. Fuck this grotesquely unequal society. Fuck people. 

The problem is that people are all that actually matters in this world, as far as much of our neurochemistry is concerned. I wasted my entire life, protecting myself. So I'm trying to change, but all this pressure is making me miserable. I just want to be alone, but my defenses are gone. That just makes me more miserable.

In turn, all this misery makes for even less of a winning personality. Less motivated, less interest in anything, more cynical and bitter about everything. It becomes so hard to even get to the gym where others might see what a failure of a person I am. Getting to the gym is supposed to be the one thing that helps, but I guess it depends on how bad the mental health gets.

late spring

Cold and wet lately, but it's felt like summer for a while. Feels odd that's it's not summer at all yet. I'm feeling disconnected from it either way because I haven't been leaving the house much.

Physically and emotionally collapsed, but not sure which precipitated the other. I certainly didn't throw my back out on purpose, nor imagine being unable to turn to my left for a week. Should give my knees some time to rest anyhow, I figured. And my wrists, my neck, and whatever else. Then my left knee swelled with fluid over the kneecap, like my body is trying to make its own knee pad. It doesn't work well. It should go away on its own, but maybe it needs to be drained, I don't know.

I was emotionally collapsing anyhow. On some level, afraid I'm exaggerating and imagining my injuries because I just want an excuse to go back to sleeping all day. I hate sleeping all day. I hate that everything is so hard. Even trying to socialize is this monumental effort. I hate the lifelong desperate escapism that comes with life being more traumatizing than it was supposed to be. I'm losing hope that whatever progress I've made is ever going to be enough that I might become human.

I used to be proud of my writing. Now I find it embarrassing and pointless. Some part of me says to keep doing it, some other part of me can't always help it, but I'd rather people not know about it. Who am I but this collection of neurosis and complaining. It's been difficult finding common interests with anyone when I don't like or take interest in much of anything anymore. 

I haven't been able to get to the gym in a few weeks, let alone compete in anything.

mid-spring

 After rolling with a purple belt tonight, he asked me, "what do you do for cardio," as if he were impressed. I've been working so hard at this. Thank you. Thank you so much. 

"Just lots of this," I responded with a big grin on my face.

I was being aggressive because I knew he was a purple belt. I'm aggressive when I think my opponent can handle it, but not everyone gets the compliment. This guy was a little bigger than me and a purple belt in BJJ, but not Judo. Sometimes that means they're not great with takedowns. He was really good at getting back up though, which gave me the chance to take him down over and over. 

Another competition coming up. I should do it. This one's small and right in Burlington. Feeling mostly nervous and not really into it, but it's my best chance to give it a try. 

A going away party for one of the people I've trained with is also coming up. Turns out, it's just a few blocks from where I live, so I have no excuse not to go to that, either. I've been fretting about what kind of food to bring. I'm thinking I probably can't go wrong with beer.

My plants have had a number of issues this year, from a leaf-miner infestation, to some bad lighting choices, to nobody pruning them. They're long and spindly and not doing so well, so I'm going to put them all outside soon. Then clean out my greenhouse. It's full of dead leaves, cobwebs, and assorted other crap. I've already started a bunch of new seedlings to refill it.

and that's pretty much my entire life these days, with lots of space in between where I just lay around listlessly.