Raw

I've had a lot of people over the years express surprise that I could be unhappy. Which is ludicrous. So I don't know if I can explain how hard the last 13 months have been for me, but I feel like it's important that I try:

Unable to get a job that is at all relevant to my interests, experience, or degree, despite applying to jobs EVERY single day. Having two very shitty, sexist, inappropriate, unprofessional sleezeballs for "bosses" before finally finding one who treated me with some respect. Not able to pay my bills and feed myself without chipping away at my savings every month, and eventually, at 28 years old, having to move in with my mother. My old car dying with spectacularly dramatic death throes that left me stranded in public and bawling on multiple occasions, and also forced me to buy a new car when I really, really needed not to. The death of my dog who was truly my best friend. A chronic, immobilizing back pain that I'm finding will be very expensive to diagnose and treat. Most devastatingly though, the shattering of what I thought would be some lifelong friendships, and finally the loss of what I thought could have been the love of my life.

If it weren't for some select friends and family who have stuck around to help me to hold it up, I know the world would have crashed down around me months ago and left me to waste away. Even so, all of my muscles are shaking violently now and I'm truly struggling to find reasons to not just give up. I want to rip my fucking heart out.

Through all of this I've found it very difficult to write, to create, to be funny and lighthearted. And that's the most crushing part. Especially working daily with the public, I can feel cynicism, bitterness, and despair chipping away at my true nature. Maybe some would simply chalk that up to adulthood stripping away my naïveté, I don't know. I just know if this is what growing up is I don't want to do it anymore. I can't do it anymore.

While moving I read a lot of old letters people have written me, many old memories of dear sweet friends telling me I inspire them and impress them with the things I'm doing. So I'm especially embarrassed and ashamed to admit that I feel like a crumpled mass of wet newspaper in an alleyway most of the time now, and that's nothing to look up to.

Anyway, things could always, always be worse, and I'm not trying to throw myself a pity party. The point of this uncomfortable rawness is that I hear a lot of crap about everyone making their lives seem like perfect fantasies on social media while hiding secret lives of quiet desperation, the inauthenticity of which then spurs more and more quiet desperation in others. So I thought I would be loud with my desperation in case it makes anyone else feel better about themselves rather than worse. There needs to be a silver lining to my grief.

There have been a lot of happy and wonderful times too, of course, that I wouldn't trade for anything, but on average I must have cried every single week of these past 13 months. I cried this morning and I'm crying right now. I've cried in a Lowe's, I've cried in Trader Joe's, I've cried in restaurants, and I've cried on my toes. I've cried at a sushi buffet, I've cried in a park, I've cried on sunny days, and I've cried in the dark. I've gone to sleep crying and woken up crying too. I've cried at work and I've cried in showers, I've cried while working out, and I've cried for 24 hours.

So "Doctor Seuss Depression Poem" aside, if you're having a bad time of it right now, you're not the only one. I'm right there with you. And if you hold my hand, maybe together we can just keep putting one foot in front of the other until we learn to walk again.