Are you radically different than your younger self? Are there key elements that have stayed the same? Most parts? Do you feel as if you’ve followed the “roadmap of life” or forged your own path? Have there been “chapters” or do things all sort of slide into one contiguous flow? Share what you’d like!
I have much less wonder now, and it is ruining my day to day enjoyment at times. It is hard to dream big when you know more about the world, and how corrupt it all can be. They call it depression, but when reasons are provided for lack of opportunities it’s seen as downright shameful to be upset about it.
I miss the times when I was more naive about the world, it made it all interesting.
Reminds me of the events that transpired over the last half a decade or so.
Over the last several years my mental state was deteriorating. Stress accumulated. Various stuff, employment, overworked, underpaid. Inability to afford housing. Covid. War overseas. Had a mental breakdown at some point. Ended up on meds and in therapy. After multiple sessions was informed by my psychologist that “the reactions you’re exhibiting are normal for a person that has experienced all the items and stress associated with all we discussed up to now, unfortunately I cannot help you as the response is perfectly normal and there’s nothing wrong with you”
I still don’t know how I feel about that specific statement after several thousand dollars of therapy, but I guess it’s better than assuming my depression isn’t “good enough” to be real depression.
There’s a good chance the world should be ashamed to be in the state that it’s in, not for you to be ashamed that you finally see it as it is.
You might like this hidden brain on languishing and how if unadressed it can turn into other mental health issues. But basically the concept is you’ve got everything you need - yet you still feel this uneasiness inside your being. Your call, but it was an interesting listen. *It is tied to an author who just published a book just a heads up.
I had a listen, thank you.
Unfortunately it does not resonate with me since the issues I faced… or rather still currently facing, are basic things that are missing, for example not having a safe space or being able to afford a place to call my own in which I could even think to begin to thrive. It’s not that the shrink didn’t see my problem, it’s that he understood that most of these are socially engineered problems, that given proper legislation from the government for social services and habitat and controlling/reigning in the rampant runoff capitalism that we’re experiencing would alleviate or resolve, and unfortunately he, being a medical professional, is not able to assist with that. He validated that I was indeed exhibiting symptoms of severe depression from these items and did the best he could, but even today, the situation stays much unchanged in most of those items. And no, I don’t have much hope for anything to change in the future, despite all the social movements we’re seeing pop up.
I’d love to be proven wrong.
Arnold H. Glasow basically covered this indirectly when he said “the fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.”
Have you ever thought about sparking your creativity? Idk if you like anything, but Lynda Barry’s Syllabus is kind of a fever dream but I really dig it. But I mean, just finding a way to get some of that energy out might help?
But yeah, everything sucks. Idk what the fuck is going on with anything anymore but it all sucks. I had to make a PieFed account to turn off the piles and piles of awful bullshit you can do absolutely zilch about. So I get this stuff, the art, the science news - all super! And someitmes I hop over to the other side and I am regretting it abotu three seconds later.
And I could do news if things were so cyclical, half the stuff wasn’t ads for people/things, and there was something I could actually do other than feel fucking horrible over what I am reading. And I know knowledge is power and ignorance is a privledge but hot damn - what am I going to do about even one freakin’ piece of news I read on this site? Like, what are others doing?
Eh.
Big hugs, you got this. Just keep going, and maybe life will send you roses. Or even if it doesn’t, maybe find joy in the small stuff? Eh.