Off-Topic General Discussion - Page 564

I feel as though I should explain myself.

So my gf and I drove into the city to see her friends play in a band. I was excited to hang out with her and see her friends, so I was looking forward to it the whole way. We had a nice dinner at this Korean joint before we left, we were joking the whole way, etc.

When we got there, they card everyone going in. Pretty normal since it's at a bar, right?

A week or so ago I got a speeding ticket and they took my license. Fantastic.

So I try to explain this to the bouncer, tell him that I don't even drink and I just want to watch the show, he just tells me to fuck off. He's clearly seen me come with people who already went in, it's not like I'm trying to break in or something.

She goes in, I told her to hang out with her friends that we drove a fucking hour into the city to see. I wasn't going to drag her away because my life takes a shit on me, whatever. They're the last group playing of 3, so I have like 2-3 hours to kill.

I decide to call someone to pass the time. No one picks up. So I call my parents, because why the fuck not. Instead of like, feeling sorry for me or whatever all they keep saying is "you can't be in the city at night, that's where people get mugged!"

I'm 24 fucking years old, not a child. I'm sitting in a Starbucks dicking around on my phone, not walking into shady alleyways waving my wallet around and jingling my car keys. Which of course is just because they love me and want me to be safe, but instead they just can't shut up about how I should just drive back to my apartment and let my girlfriend go back with her friends instead because it's not safe, and I just hang up on them because what kind of dick move would that be on my part.

So now I'm pissed, my battery is dying, the staff is giving me these looks like they just want to close the shop. I go for a walk in the freezing weather and make that post because just fuck everything at that point.

I just planned to take her back home and then go back and drink myself into a stupor and see what happened. I'm just sick of my shit luck and life kicking me in the balls at every juncture. It's bullshit, I'm tired of not being able to have one night where I can just enjoy things without them blowing up in my face.

But then we go back to my place, watch stupid kung fu movies, and go to bed, she stays over for the first time since we've been dating. And you know what? It's nice. It's the one thing I have lately that makes me genuinely smile in a sea of pisswater.

And I'm afraid at every turn that I'm going to fuck it up.

As someone who's living with depression (probably something like undiagnosed manic-depressive, I quit going to therapists some time ago), I have to say one thing. Anyone who said "just man up" or whatever, fuck you. No seriously, fuck off. I've heard it for my whole life. If it was just as easy as smiling and ignoring everything, I wouldn't have tried to kill myself in high school. I wouldn't have had a habit of punching things until my fists bled. I wouldn't have spiraled into such a dark place that my boss told me to take time off work and get better because I was visibly distraught every day for a month.

It doesn't matter that other people have it worse. Pointing out all the good things in a depressed person's life DOES NOTHING AT ALL. Not a fucking thing, all you're doing is making them feel worse for not being happy and then they get more pissed at themselves and crash harder. You think I don't know how lucky I am? I have a family, a job, a roof over my head. I know that this basically puts me in the top 10% of the people on the planet when it comes to well-being.

But that doesn't mean anything. If you seriously think you know what it's like without having gone though depression yourself, because you've been unhappy in your life and had hardships, stop. Never post about this subject again. Until you go a full year looking in the mirror and thinking about how easy it would be to drink a bottle of Drano, you don't know what it's like. Until you know the pressure in your chest, the cold clawing at the back of your eyes, the gloom that permeates all of your life telling you that nothing you can do will ever make you happy or mean anything, you don't know the feeling.

It's like trying to walk through life with a bag over your head. It's dark and blurry and hard to breathe and you just wish you could ask for help but you're afraid that the world will think less of you so you just stumble along trying not to draw attention to yourself, even though you know it's plainly obvious that you're just fucked up and you just KNOW everyone knows it anyway. So you just paint your bag into a mask and pretend it's your face, and try to fool everyone you know into thinking your normal, when just under the surface you're crying and covered in dirt and blood. And under that you just feel like a cold ball of emptiness and rage and pain and violence and fear, so you lock away every feeling you have - good or bad - because you don't want it to get out and hurt the people you love as badly as it's hurt you.

And it's not like you can control yourself anyway. When someone asks "what's wrong?", you just want to tell them that you've been thinking about hurting yourself, tell them that you can't be happy even if you won the lotto and married a supermodel, tell them that you just want to feel important and loved but the only thing that can come out of your mouth is "nothing, I just feel tired", but inside you're SCREAMING for someone, anyone to just come into your life and tell you it's all going to be ok, but they never will because you just. can't. say. anything.