Re: Depression

I posted my very sad thoughts on Steemit and Reddit, and I was honestly surprised by the amount of people that replied to me on Reddit with their own thoughtful messages. At this moment it was only seven responses, and 45 upvotes, but it honestly made me feel better. It was the opposite of what I expected, which was zero responses, so even if it’s a tiny minority of people and regardless if I agree with them or not, I still feel grateful to those people that did reply. It means more than they realize. Not everyone can have a response like Yuber did when he posted this video.

He got ¾ of a million views for that, and infinitely more responses, but I swear to you that the seven I received means as much as the flood he got. It’s way too easy to get wrapped up in your own thoughts, and in the process lose perspective in where you sit versus the rest of the human race.

The fact that people focused on my skill in writing when they responded to me, or just the idea of sharing their own thoughts exactly, it empowered me in a way I never thought I’d experience. I thought those feels were reserved for people like Justin Roiland and Seth Macfarlane, but even receiving a handful of messages just like they would get, it inspires me. It makes me feel better about what and who I am, and it makes me want to push through the shitty circumstances I find myself in. The fact that even one person asked me to share my writing so they could help me, it means more in intent alone than anything else I’ve experienced; and even if they never deliver, the idea alone makes me want to write more.

I thought I might get a response like this from the social commentary that I’ve been trying on Steemit, but never once did I think my depressive, pseudo-analytical thoughts would provoke real humans to engage me in a positive way. And it doesn’t seem fake, like I thought it might be. It seems like there are people who think like me, who think I can represent how they feel better than they can represent. That’s a powerful feeling I thought I’d die never experiencing, but wishing for.

You might ask; why would you want to represent people’s thoughts better than they can? Doesn’t that seem a little arrogant and self-importanizing (if that’s even a fucking word)? I can only speak for myself and how I feel, to add a caveat before I get to the point. But I’ve spent my entire life looking for the people who better represent how I feel about the world than myself. And to find those people is a load off my brain, it’s the opposite of a burden. It makes me feel like there are people out there in the world, working to make it a better place, regardless of how paralyzed I might be by my own failings; the world moves on without me and into a better future, which is empowering and makes me feel like I should be catching up to these people, and it’s not just an endless dark tunnel I have to lead the way down alone, it makes me feel like I’m following the path all humanity should be on. And it doesn’t really matter if the majority never end up on this path, as long as there’s someone to share the road with, I find myself happy where otherwise I found nothingness and all the emotions that come along with that.

So this is my long and complicated way of saying thank you to Reddit, even if I don’t agree with the platforms’ politics most of the time (either /r/politics or /r/the_donald). You guys gave me more than I could have asked for, and I feel obligated to give back some of the effort you guys spent reading and responding that very long and very depressing first post. Sometimes I felt like /r/depression was just a place to dump your thoughts and walk away from them, but now I see it’s a place to evolve and move past that emotion when you can find people who think the same way you do, or at least understand your thinking.

And the cops haven’t raided me and shot me in the process, so I thank you all for that as well. I can’t say that thought was 100% in the realm of impossibility for me, so that’s reassuring as well. If I can hold your attention for a few more moments, I’d like to lay out how I’m going to try to move forward with your guys’ support.

Someone has already offered to read and provide feedback on the book I mentioned in my first post, and that’s far above and beyond what I expected from you guys. I gave a link to my book and I will again in this post for anyone interested.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14qKqraA0cXXVrLGmF131UR3VCjlyVcJNgSzQGYZYRx4/edit?usp=sharing

Even if you have no writing expertise to provide, I would be overjoyed with any and all feedback you guys could provide. I’d be happy to get flooded with negative messages about it, as long as those messages are constructive in some which way. There is no point of view I won’t consider, so please, if you feel like you have something to say, I implore you to speak up. Life is fleeting, after all.

I’ve always tried to create things in my freetime, if I wasn’t self-medicating or self-entertaining myself with video games and whatnot. I’ve always valued the logical opinions of other people, and I have no problem shitting on myself and my mistakes. I legitimately enjoy improving myself and my thought process, and that’ll always be number one when it comes to my life experience, so don’t feel afraid to tear me apart if you feel it’s necessary.

Just in the name of context and interest, I want to share with you guys my spotify playlist I mentioned in my first post in case you were interested in it. And I also wanted to share my writing playlist, in the hopes that someone else listens to it and it inspires them to write something at least in the same vein of thinking to what I’ve been writing.

Danger Zone, 1,834 followers: https://open.spotify.com/user/1275769874/playlist/4g0vsEr43G4dah5DgwjxN2?si=3XBxE0_yRJ-lPed-vMJvIQ

Writing Music, 0 followers: https://open.spotify.com/user/1275769874/playlist/3e31R7ujWc0FgaKa5UKjeq?si=dzDZ7W3tTVW91b-X1TrPZg

Even if you lack the ability to write creatively, I still see it as a unique combination of music and themes that shouldn’t be passed up just because you aren’t a writer. Until I find a better phrase for it, I just label it what’s most useful to me, which is a musical playlist that inspires me to speak.

Again, I feel overwhelmed even with the humble responses I’ve received, and I would similarly treasure any responses this post generates, so don’t feel afraid to contribute even if you think it’s not useful enough to justify a response. You will be surprised how powerful your honest message can be, just as I was. I honestly thought my message would fade into nothingness, with not a soul to care for me. As it stands now, seven souls felt compelled to respond, and respond positively, and that’s more than I could ever ask for.

I want to start down a new path in life, a path in which many people can come together and experience the same level of relief and happiness I felt as these messages of encouragement trickled in over the course of a day. You guys gave me more than I could have hoped for, and it helped me move forward, even if it’s just an inch forward.

Progress is progress, and any attempt to diminish it is pessimism at its core. That’s not to say that outlook doesn’t have its merits, many could accurately argue that I had quite the pessimistic attitude during my first post. The important part is I didn’t just blow my brains out a moment after posting how I really feel. And that’s because I had the courage to read the responses. And it made me want to live, not end it all like I thought it would.

In the back of my brain, thanks to people like Trent Reznor, who put the entirety of his pessimistic emotions out on the line, for the entire public to see, I knew I wasn’t alone. I knew I wasn’t the only person to feel like this. It just reinforced itself when I had random strangers on the internet try to connect with me in ways I never thought would happen.

You don’t have to like his type of music to understand what I’m saying, but believe me when I say that Trent Reznor saved me from suicide long before anything else did. I honestly believe that his Nine Inch Nails project is a shining example of the human condition and everything that an honest human being born into the average wealth situation has to deal with in this age.

It transcends gender, age, creed, generations and politics. It goes beyond everything that divides us and brings us back to our most basest elements, spongy humans with emotions worrying about ourselves and our loved ones.

I could sit here and quote lyrics to back up my points, but I think it would be more powerful to allow people to draw their own meanings from his music without forcing my own particular ideas onto everyone that might discover his music through this post. And that’s in the best interest of you, but also me. It allows a diversity of opinion to exist, and to ensure these ideas don’t die out the second the culture shifts away from the sometimes arbitrary way I and my culture think. I keep hearing this quote from conservatives lately, “Politics is downstream from culture.” And that’s painfully true, especially when I think back to the time I thought the right to bear arms was arbitrary and led to more deaths. Now I own two guns and I couldn’t be more in favor of people having the right to defend themselves with the most advanced technology this world has to offer. And at the same time, I’m not in the camp of people who think taxation is theft.

I think the diversity of opinion is the most important part of our democracy, and every person who mocks the opposite side of the aisle fundamentally fails to understand the point of the political process; the point is not to appear the most right and morally virtuous, but to actually be the most right and morally virtuous. And when we choose a political victory over what is actually right and morally correct, we lose overall. America and the world overall has to accept that each side is playing a game, and we have to actually select who is right, not the person who we’re told feels right.

If reddit continues to be 100% opposed to Trump, even when he improves the economy and the lives of the majority of Americans, even when he makes peace with N. Korea and challenges our “allies” that were happy to murder us in trade for untold decades, they are going to turn me into a Trump supporter.

I want you to to understand that I wanted to vote for Obama in 08 and 2012, and I didn’t vote in 2016 because I wanted Bernie Sanders to win. So you have to admit at some point I was never a shoe-in Trump supporter, but if he makes the world a better place and America more prosperous than Obama made it, you have to accept truth and reality the same way I swallowed that hard pill.

I don’t want you to comply to my politics the same way the mainstream news media demands that you conform; I just want you to think about what’s best for you, as Americans. Because we’ve done plenty for the world around us; millions have bled and died for it, and we do them a disservice when we ignore reality in favor of our political party. We have to hold our own interests above the propaganda that gets spewed out of both political sides.

And with that tiny political rant aside, I want to again thank you guys for what you’ve done for me. Regardless if we can agree on every little thing, I hope we can all move forward together toward something worth living for. I hope that message trumps everything else that gets thrown in our faces. I know for myself at least, I won’t compromise what’s best for us, for what appears to be better for everyone. Because there’s a limited sect of humanity that’s actually looking to improve the lot of the average American; we know that purely through the unfair trade tariffs placed on us by our ‘allies’, that simultaneously tell us we’re greedy to ask them to pay their fair share instead of sucking our success away from us.