I am tired of your mental illness

Everyone gets anxiety, everyone gets depressed, everyone struggles with things—we need to move on

As mentioned in my last piece, I am very Mean and Bad and Not Compassionate, unlike the Goods and Empathetics of the world. As such, it should come as no surprise to you that I am tired of your mental illness.

To be specific, I am tired of your labeling of every struggle and character flaw you have as a “mental illness,” with which you will be stuck with for life, and that impedes you from doing any normal thing humans have always had to do.

Do you think that at any point in history prior to now people insisted that they couldn’t acquire or cook food for themselves on account of “anxiety”? Or that they couldn’t go to work or interact with other human beings or walk places on account of “depression”? No, of course not. That’s silly. Because at other points in history (and in most other places outside the West) people had to survive and try not to die. They couldn’t just lie around in their houses pressing buttons that deliver things like food and dopamine.

Today, though, we are told that DoorDash is some kind of human right because people who are “depressed” and “have anxiety” can’t buy groceries or plan meals. What on earth would you have done at any other point in history?!? What if you had to gather berries or hunt elk or mill flour so you could bake bread or cook food to feed your family?? Would you have refused on account of “depression” because, what? The iPhone wasn’t yet invented and you just knew there was something else that was meant to do this for you?

You people are pathetic and ridiculous. I’m sorry. I realize this, again, sounds mean and uncompassionate and that I will be told I just don’t understand what it’s like to struggle with ailments like not being able to get places on time (or at all) or think about what food I might eat tomorrow or the next day.

But the thing is that I do!

I, like you, have all the symptoms of “ADHD.” I too struggle with remembering things, getting places on time, and completing tasks! I just don’t have any interest in labeling a regular, flawed brain as some kind of mental illness excusing me from basic tasks I need to do in order to thrive and survive. Nor do I wish to be reliant on a meth prescription. I think it is silly that people expect all of life to come easy, and that if it doesn’t, it must mean there is something fundamentally wrong with you and your brain that resigns you to lying on a couch staring at a screen.

I do not accept that experiencing anxiety or depression means you cannot go for a walk, or make some scrambled eggs, or meet a friend, or buy groceries, or go to work. I understand that you might feel this way, but feeling a certain way is not the same thing as literally being unable to do a thing.

I too have experienced depression and anxiety. I imagine everyone in the world has. Bad and hard things happen, and life can be sad and stressful and traumatic. This has always been true. And yet, life goes on… It must. I certainly acknowledge others have faced more severe or long-term bouts with things like depression and anxiety than I, but it also must be acknowledged that most people who have overcome have done so not by lying on their couches, but by getting on with it—getting out into the world and doing life. I have learned through experience that when I feel anxious or depressed, I need to get out and do something—even if it’s just work. But it could be going to the store to buy some fruit or it could be going to the gym or it could be walking the dog or it could be going to the bar. Whatever works, figure it out, and do it. Even if you don’t want to.

The problem of feeling bad or stressed or traumatized is not new. Much of the problem, to my mind, is the labels. The identifying with these feelings and experiences as permanent and unchangeable parts of our psyches, that can never be overcome, and that will dictate every aspect of our lives for all eternity, is unhelpful.

Imagine telling someone living 500+ years ago (or in almost any other culture) that eating the same thing every day is “torture”—that you must have unique food experiences on the daily on account of your “different brain.”

It’s fucking retarded if you think about what most people have eaten for most of their lives in other periods in history and in other parts of the world.

The way to overcome depression and anxiety is to get up and get at it. Do the thing that is giving you anxiety, whether that means going a cafe or going swimming. If you are feeling depressed, force yourself to get off the couch and find a recipe for a thing you’d like to eat. Go to the grocery store, buy the things, and cook the meal. I bet you will feel better! Go meet a friend, even if you don’t feel like it. It won’t kill you. Lying on the couch for the rest of your life might, though!

If you are a middle-upper class person living in the West you have it easier than pretty much anyone ever before at any point in history. No one is sending you to war and you probably don’t have to cut down trees in order to heat your house. You won’t starve if you don’t kill a boar. You are not going to die from an infected cut. You have running water ffs. Pour yourself a glass out of your tap that clean water comes out of, take a hot fucking shower you spoiled baby, and walk to the store where any food you want to eat exists for you to buy and take home with you. You can keep it in the box in your house that keeps your food cold so it doesn’t rot. Maybe call a friend on your phone that connects you to the entire world on demand. You can walk out your door and meet them at a cafe or a bar or at the gym because these things exist everywhere for your convenience. And if you don’t have a friend, go there anyway, because maybe you’ll make one.

Seriously.