Bad day today. I made another work mistake. I’m feeling trapped. I hate my life. This is not the life I want to live. Happy 4th of July!
I’m watching two servers from a restaurant called “The Boiling Crab” walk into the coffee shop. They are wearing Boiling Crab shirts that say “crew” on the back of it. What the hell do you think this is, yacht racing? Get over yourself, Boiling Crab. They should replace the word “crew” with “former liberal arts majors.” That would be a more accurate label.
I’m in the kind of mood where I hate everything. I’m trying to park this morning, and two elderly people are crossing the entrance in front of me. The older woman suddenly stops, stands still, and shakes her head, depressed, as if to say “I can’t go on.” She’s doing this right in the middle of my “I can’t go on” depression, but the difference is, I’m not impeding the goddamned flow of traffic. Her husband (presumably) points me out, and she begins walking again. For all I know, my impatient glance is what kept her going. I may well have saved her life with my LA driver’s rudeness. On the other hand, maybe I should have done her a favor by running her over.
The feeling of being trapped – of hating my life – it is particularly powerful today. But on the other hand, I’m beginning to have doubts about whether or not I would be happy if I were, in fact, living the life I wanted to lead. So I begin to ask myself “what is the point of anything?”
And this is where I start thinking about suicide. In a “funny” blog about depression, it’s exceedingly difficult to bring up the concept of suicide and keep things light. That’s why, in order to keep things hilarious, I’m trying to figure out how to commit suicide on a unicycle.
I’m not going to commit suicide. I made a promise to my mother that I wouldn’t. So I’ll just wait until my parents die, and then do it. That’s what the kids would call a “life hack.”
But on the other hand, what if I wanted to commit suicide? What if I was just done with all of this? “But think of the pain and suffering you’ll cause,” is what people would say. People who know me would be sad, but not forever. As with all painful things, they would eventually move on. And people who don’t know me won’t be affected at all – if anything, it’s one less parking spot that will be taken. Yes, yes, yes, every human soul is precious, blah blah blah.
But then I stop myself and say this: don’t kill yourself, Josh. As bad as things are now, they will get worse, and aren’t you the least bit curious about how much worse things can get?
Thus, the desire to witness a trainwreck doth make cowards of us all.
Here’s my other fear – that my life actually starts to go better, and right when things are beginning to look up, I find out I have six months to live. George went through something similar to this on an episode of Seinfeld, so I know it’s a valid concern.
And this is the point where I remember one of my teachers telling me that I “enjoy being in my own pain.” Maybe he is right. Do I have the ability to just turn all of this off and be happy? (I think the medical term for that would be denial). Maybe, on some deeper level, I am getting off on this.
So what’s the root of all of this? The fact that I’m not perfect? The fact that I make mistakes?
“Don’t take things personally.” That’s the advice I keep getting at work. “You’re taking it personally. Don’t take it personally.”
I am a person. Another person is yelling at me. How else am I supposed to take it? Like I’m a desk lamp.
I take everything personally because I have emotions. I don’t know why I have them – something to do with billions of years of evolution – but I have them nonetheless. And I’m tired of being told how to express them. I’m tired of worrying about how to express them. I feel like shit today. I want to continue feeling like shit today until I don’t feel like shit anymore. Now get the hell out of the street, because I’m trying to park here, you schmuck (but don’t take it personally).