The Hilarious World of Depression

The saddies attach little or no sense of intrinsic value to their person, so accomplishment automatically feels fraudulent.

Boy, I spin thoughts around in my head a lot, don’t I? Like, a lot. That’s what depression does. The dance floor of your mind is never without a pounding beat, and usually the DJ is playing eight or nine songs at the same time.

A depressed mind is pretty adept at buying into a distorted reality.

Depression is an illness that happened to you. Maybe it was from the chemicals and inherited genetic traits that appeared in your brain before you were even born. Maybe it was from a trauma that occurred and then festered in your brain. Maybe there were people with power over you who behaved in a way that screwed you up. It wasn’t you. You didn’t c

Only by being useful or talented, and receiving external recognition, would I achieve personhood. I couldn’t imagine a world where I was a worthwhile person by dint of mere existence; I felt like I needed to earn it and prove it every day.

I’ve managed to stop getting worse. I want to be better.”

I’m a straight white man. The last three words of the previous sentence give me three layers of support in this society. Toss in a college education and my status as married with kids, that’s a few more.

You’re not “in a major depression” when your team loses the big game, you’re just sad and disappointed like a normal healthy human gets. One’s a mood, the other’s a mental illness. If you were really depressed, you’d feel the same thing if your team won or lost, or perhaps feel nothing at all regardless of a game’s outcome.

“Depression lies,” said Jenny Lawson on a season two episode. “Because every single time, it says, ‘You’ll never come out of this again. You are absolutely worthless, your family is better off without you.’ And then I remind myself depression lies. Those things are lies.”