Is this depression? I do not think it meets the clinical criteria for Major Depression, and besides, I am fairly suspicious of the validity of those criteria anyway. I get up, move, approach things I hate (workplace), evade oncoming traffic when crossing the street, maintain vegetative functions, and resume an unsatisfying sleep without too much difficulty, nor a whole lot of drugs, either.
I suspect there may be some who feel now an urge to educate me about what depression is, and how it can manifest. Thanks. I appreciate your concern. But (and I think this may be included in the aforementioned criteria), I don’t care.
Can I just be alone? That is not really an option, you know. Yeah, sure, there are in this and other cultures examples of the hermit, the solitary meditant, the mystic. But drawing back from the ideal for a moment, and landing squarely in the middle of a dirty kitchen floor, with laundry to be done, a broken bike to fix and bills to pay, then such romantic vapors dissipate quite completely.
And being alone is not really what I want anyway; I just do not want to sacrifice conscious awareness of that which cannot be known, and I do not want to sever connection with that which cannot be found, both of which are prerequisite conditions for almost every ego-based interpersonal transaction. And discounting and discarding such prerequisites tends to make others view one as ‘weird’ or in extreme cases, even as insane. We relate as egos, it is required by friends, lovers, family members. “Get in costume will you! Stop being so lazy! Stop being such a dolt!”
What are you, nuts?
It’s phony. And we know it. But we just shrug as if it doesn’t matter, and move on. Maybe we think it is the best we can do. And maybe it is. That is truly tragic. What I am and what you are is infinitely more than that psychological entity we call ego. In reducing ourselves to that level as a prerequisite for relating, we lose almost everything. Losses of that magnitude might well result in something that might qualify, according to our crass metrics, as depression.
So, it’s a bad day. I am stuck between two untenables. I don’t want to engage in the artificial pretense, don the mask, and play the game that costs so much—too much for me. But I am also too afraid to disarm completely, drop the shields, the masks, and once and for all discard the ego. A good day is when I play the game and everybody buys it, and I don’t care how much it costs; that is a ‘good’ day. A bad day is when I know the truth, know how much it costs, and know how impenetrably terrified I am.
Today was a bad day.