Firmly, Yes

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You sit at a computer most days, avoiding work. It’s not so different from how it was before. There isn’t that much to do on any given day. You’re still conditioned to sit and procrastinate though. Still feel bad for every second spent away from the desk. So you sit here in a nine-to-five obligation no one is keeping track of. Because you don’t actually have a job. Because your work doesn’t feel like work. And you feel bad because of this.

Comments filter in around the clock. Lovely people saying the nicest things. It floors you. It fills you with blue sky gratitude, but it also scares you. And you never talk of the fear because it could easily sound ungrateful. Being fearful of a connection people would do anything for. But it’s not that. It’s that you feel like a fraud, like you don’t deserve this. That this can’t be happening to you and it must be some mistake because why would anyone think you’re good enough to be adored, cherished, loved? There’s been a mistake somewhere and you’re just waiting from them to find out, and for them to take it all back, and for you to slink back to bed, cold and numb, again.

You meet friends rarely, and when you do, they say things like, jesus man, life must be mad now, is it? And you sort of nod, sort of say yes, but mostly you lean against the hull of the conversation like some giant reptilian thing and push it in a new direction. Because life is not mad now. It’s mostly the same. It’s mostly you alone every day doing destructive things, distracting things to avoid doing the very little bit of work you’re able for. But it is different, too. Different because people know you, and because people say nice things on the internet, and because you are invited into rooms now that you could only ever really dreamed about before.

But still, it feels unearned, undeserved. Like you’re stealing something. Like you have not done enough to be worthy of this. And you fear that other people think, feel, this. That other writers talk poorly of you because of how you managed to achieve this. Not the right way. And maybe it’s because you feel so broadly, so sensitively, that you’re actually picking up on this global feeling, sensing it, absorbing it through your skin like some sort of anxious osmosis. So much so that even when things are going really well for you, can you believe it type of thing, you still feel on edge, still compare, still want more. Nothing is ever enough because you want the light and feel abandoned when it briefly leaves to shine on someone else.

And all of this is ego, and all of this cowardice. All of this you know because you sit to write it down to try and make sense of it like you always do, always have, always will, I suppose. But you also know that depression is an illness of the ego, at least it is for you. So maybe what is happening here again, for the third time in a decade, is just that. Depression lurking in drunk and absurd from the sopping night to lay beside you. And no matter how you recoil it is too big to avoid. So maybe it is this. This again. Too much focus on the self has always been the early sign. Too much me and not enough we. And so here you are, here’s the answer. Not a solution but the answer.

Life must be mad for you now, is it? Firmly, yes. Absolutely nod. It’s just not as fun as it might look.