Unsolicited Advice in re Depression

It is important to observe, when enduring depression, the overlap between those who want to help but say they simply do not understand, and those who will, when you’re telling someone precisely how it feels, pick up their phone in order to interrupt and show you the latest New Yorker cover.

It’s probably for the best that you did not only yesterday discuss with this person the concept of timing in relation to when they choose to laugh out loud.

Unless, of course, you did.

Good luck.

Notes on … Oh, Hell, I Forget

[#nevermind]

Okay, so I just don’t understand why it is I cannot walk into a room and simply be allowed to do whatever it is I am doing. Look at me, I can’t even remember what I was there, for, because suddenly I needed to stop whatever I was doing and think about what books I might want for Christmas, as if the question could not wait another second, or, even more, mattered a whit, because we both know those aren’t the books people buy me. And now, what was that, did I just walk into a room and randomly be asked to peruse and approve a household change of some consequence? Really?

Some days, all I want is breakfast. Or a cup of coffee. Or to find that book that was on the foyer table, like, oh, I don’t know, when between yesterday afternoon and right now did it actually disappear? And why do I always find them, in weird places, months later? Of course, maybe it wouldn’t take months if I was allowed to think about why I walked into the damn room in the first place. You know, like: Oh, yeah, that book I’m looking for; it’s not here, so I’d better keep looking. No, of course not. And, just for the record, if the question eventually becomes what the book is doing hidden away in the linen closet behind the broken DVD player we’ve never thrown out, no, we are not changing the subject to why there’s an old, broken DVD player in the linen closet.

Oh, right. Whatever. It’s just, most days it’s true, the functional lesson resolves that the fundamental user error is in the fact of bothering to try, in the first place.

When it gets to the point of pacing back and forth because the mere thought of what happens after leaving the room is so distracting as to forget why I would leave the room in the first place, there is a problem. Solutions exceeding my power are not mine to implement.

Unceasing

Watch people never learn. This part is simple: You’re in the way. But they are never in the way, right? Except the cat thinks you are. Well, they’re just not in the way. None of this would really mean anything, either, except in those moments when you hear someone trying to order a kitten around by repeating the same three or four words in grating falsetto that any observer with line of sight would notice only makes the cat wince. If you want the cat to come in from the garage, then don’t stand in the doorway and angrily explain why the cat shouldn’t be in the garage. If you want someone to tempt the cat back into the house with sound, such as food, then get out of the way. Don’t literally stand there in the way and wonder why he isn’t passing through. Meanwhile, the house is flooding with cold air, including the lower portion where the heat system does not work properly, and this, too, would be something to not even notice, except when finally walking away from the open door in disgust and complaining that it’s cold in the house.

This Really Shouldn’t Need Explaining

There is a household discussion that has to do with why I never watch television in the living room. The problem with this discussion, of course, is that the answer to the question is essentially verboten: It is impossible to watch television in the living room.

There is, indeed, a television in the living room, and the problem is not so much the arrangement of the kitchen such that there is a lot of noise from the one into the other. Rather, it is that nobody is allowed to watch television in that room without having conversations about something else: How much cheese there is, or going to the grocery store tomorrow afternoon, or, hey, maybe we should buy a new television; I can’t remember the other six topics, but it really is like a television show or movie in and of itself.

If I managed to watch five minutes of the show, I couldn’t tell you what happened. In all the years I have known multiple people to behave this way, talking over a television program about something irrelevant and nonessential, then waiting quite literally a matter of seconds to do it again, it has never really made sense. Sometimes you can rewind and replay the same segment in front of them multiple times, and it starts to feel as if they actually resent that you are watching television, would very much like you to stop, consider themselves too polite to actually say so, and thus have no alternative save annoying you until you turn off the program and leave.

And that is what it is, but in the end, yes, that is why I watch television downstairs. The answer, when I actually encounter the question of why I don’t watch television in the living room is to look at the only person in the house who asks me that and say―

“Because you won’t let me. Because if you are home and awake, and I am watching television in this room, you absolutely must speak to me now about whatever you can think of in the moment, even if it’s a matter weeks away having precisely nothing to do with me. Because I have just rewound the same fifteen seconds of this show, several times, in order to hear what they’re saying, and every time I restart the video you start talking again. Because when I tried turning up the volume just to see what happened, you actually talked louder in order to be heard. Because I can take a hint, a’ight?”

―and you just don’t go talking to people like that.

Updated Futility

And then you went, when everything was virtually done, and deliberately wrecked the soup.

Does anybody understand that when you’re supposed to be the sane people in the room, this kind of behavior really stands out?

Futility

I don’t know; it’s just heartbreaking in its moment. I mean, fuck, somebody wants you to cook something you’re known for cooking, and guess what: No, don’t do what you always do! You need to do it my way or else it isn’t right!

Then fucking cook it, yourself.

Seriously, I’ve just been overridden in my own goddamn kitchen!

Fucking bullshit. You don’t want it, then don’t fucking ask. You want something else, then say so. But don’t fucking go out of your way to make me miserable in my own kitchen.

You Wouldn’t Believe (The Legend of the Accursed Potato Chip)

I live in an American household that manages to make potato chips unpalatable. Let that point sink in.

Behavioral Mysteries Are A Lot Easier to Solve if You Just Accept the Fact That Most People Are Inherently Miserable and Cruel

[#nevermind]

It’s never really that people don’t understand; we always say it as if they are somehow confused, when they are not. Like this:

• Why do people fail to understand that if someone should expect to be criticized every time they walk into the room, to the point that one can actually watch people look around for something to complain about, then no, that person will not want to be in the room with you.

It is not that everyday belligerence doesn’t understand; these people do. It is not that they are somehow confused about why the constant hostility distresses anyone; they aren’t.

If there is any one thing you ask people to not do, they will do it.

Everyday Whatnot

[#nevermind]

So, there is this thing people do, sometimes, and perhaps it is perfectly human behavior, except when it is so clearly statistically deviant^α. Or maybe it’s just something about perception. Sometimes we exist in an environment where simple things are impossible: I am writing something; my coffee cup is empty; if you wish to take odds, no, I cannot manage to go refill my coffee cup without someone demanding that I stop what I am doing and undertake another task. And perhaps that summary sounds a bit pointed, but when you can watch someone get up and start searching the room for something to give you, they make some sort of point: Here is something that looks like it has a deadline in about four weeks; you need to stop what you are doing and do this thing right now.

And if you ask about this phenomenon, the one thing people don’t do is explain why they can’t leave you to what you’re doing; indeed, very often they come right out and—what, confess? admit? acknowledge? chide?—say the one has nothing to do with the other.

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^α There is, of course, a recursive dive into the question acknowledging that statistical deviance, real or perceived, is itself perfectly human; this is, to the one, a seemingly legitimate existential consideration, and, to the other, a nihilistic rabbit hole.

How Stupid | #trumpstupid

#trumpstupid | #WhatTheyVotedFor

There comes a point at which it seems the most straightforward explanation seems, quite simply, that Donald Trump does not understand how much trouble he cannot get out of.

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Image note: Detail of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weiner, 12 June 2015.