Occasionally, things make me happy, but it’s a very fleeting emotion for me. As a depressed individual, I celebrate the days when I don’t feel as sad. I said ‘as sad’. There are days when I can hardly muster the necessary motivation to get out of bed. The things that keep me going are not motivation, which I have a hard time mustering, but habit and obligation.
I ran across a thing on Facebook at one point which resonated with me. It said it was okay to live for something other than yourself. If you can’t live for yourself, you can live for your dog, your cat, your friends, your job, whatever will keep you going from day to day. What I live for changes periodically. I get out of bed in the morning because I own two cats, both of whom appreciate being fed in the morning. I feed myself because I need my meds to go to work and I can’t take them on an empty stomach. I may not want food, but I know I will be more miserable if I don’t have some. I go to work because truthfully, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t. Busy keeps me from self-examination in such a way that I want to cut my own throat.
I feel a lot of negative emotions. Pleasure, happiness, joy, these things are hard for me to feel and even harder for me to sustain. This is not to say I cannot enjoy things or that I cannot feel pleasure. It’s just where (at least it seems to me) most people feel pleasure or enjoyment for a long while, I get bursts of that emotion and then I drop again, sort of like a wingbeat bringing me higher in the air followed by the corresponding drop. I have to work hard to keep the wings beating which would allow me to fly. I look at the ease with which others manage these positive emotions with wonder. I just cannot seem to get it.
This does not preclude me from putting on a happy face. I smile a lot. I laugh a good bit though my sense of humor is sometimes a little off-putting. My friends, according to them, enjoy my company and find me a pleasure to be around. I do a very good job of faking my way through until there are a number of people who don’t recognize there is anything wrong with me. Perhaps ‘wrong with me’ is the incorrect phrase. Different about me is probably better. I am different.
I don’t write this post to say that I am suffering. That sort of goes without saying. I die a thousand times a day in my own mind, but I refuse to take the step which would make that a reality. Sometimes I think it’s a sense of obstinacy. I am too stubborn about living to die and too sad to live life to the fullest. Therefore, I aim for content. Content doesn’t feel as far away as joy. If we think in terms of mountains, I stay in the foothills where I am content rather than consistently fall off the mountain which represents happiness. These days, I am content. I get up for my cats. I medicate for the people in my life who need me not to cry at the drop of a hat. I sleep because it makes things bearable. I eat for the fleeting pleasure of food. I write in order to remain sane. All these things together add up to a content enough life for me.