I Love a Bunch of Genres

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

Sly & The Family Stone

Greatest Hits

I’ve been going through some things lately; some of them concrete, others in my head. I don’t hear people talk about it often, but we all have different personae, right? I’m a different guy in different situations, and when I write here, too often I find myself slipping into a character that I don’t necessarily like. He’s someone frustrated and whiny and selfish, and recently I felt the real me slipping into that mode.

When I started writing the above paragraph, I planned to stick to vague terms like “some things” to describe the condition my condition is in, but I’m a fan of honesty, so I’ll take a more straightforward approach. Before I continue, though, please know that the reason I hesitated to be so direct in the first place was that I’m not looking for sympathy and I don’t mean to whine. Seriously.

There are other factors under the umbrella of “some things,” but the big one is depression. I have a big case of it. The biological, chemical kind. The stupid kind that comes along in waves to drown me in madness and wreck my life before retreating again and plotting its return. It’s annoying. And utterly miserable at its worst, but it’s not, like, suicide depression. It’s nothing unmanageable, but it is disruptive.

I think there’s a perception that depression = sadness, but that’s not quite the case. There’s sadness, yes, wailing and arduous sadness, but there’s also emptiness, and there’s paralysis, and, yes, it drowns me in a maelstrom of apocalyptic woe and anguish. But depression also makes me appreciate the good things and the good friends so much more. It stops the world and rubs my nose in my sadness, and there’s nothing pleasant about that, but it makes me accept that, yes, there are reasons for me to be sad, and it motivates me DO SOMETHING; to find solutions. Yes, the chemicals trickling through my skull are improperly balanced, and that does funny things to me, but is it the cause of my sadness, or does it simply amplify the feelings that are already there? I hate the symptoms of depression, but they couldn’t be more effective in pushing me to work toward curing the real diseases in my life.

But ignoring the details, let me return to the key word, disruptive, and to my thesis: we all wear different masks. Do you ever find yourself talking to a friend and notice that you have nothing to add to the conversation? Maybe you’re tired, or hungry, or you’ve just finished a particularly numbing day at work, or your mind is on other things, but no matter how hard you try, you just can’t say anything interesting? And then the next night you go to a party, and suddenly you’re an endless stream of stories and jokes, and strangers and friends alike are hanging onto your every word? Or, as a different sort of example, maybe sometimes you want nothing more than e-mail everyone you know hilarious YouTube videos of cats farting on ugly babies, but other times you want to quietly discuss art and love and the nature of the universe long into the night.

Everyone has different ways to be, but we also have some central character that binds it all together. Call it what you want - your personality, your soul, whatever - but there is something in your mind that makes you you. There are also times where you act out of character. Who you are may not change, but the you you present to the world may not be the same as the you that exists within you.

The probability of being you is in constant flux, and depression is one of many factors that disrupts that probability. My latest bout of depression is fading, though, and I feel more likely to be mice elf each day.

If you’re skipping to the bottom to see how long this post is, the answer is it’s this long. Pretty long, I’d say. I don’t think I’d bother. You might be better off waiting for the movie.