I’ve come to some difficult realizations as of late. I’m emotionally bottled up by ways of suppression and avoidance. Here are two stories that indirectly shed light on what I mean.

There’s a song named Sober by Childish Gambino. The video itself has a lot of layers, and while my interpretation of it might not be accurate it does resonate and mean something to me.

The lead character is a goofy loner sitting in a restaurant that takes interest in a girl that comes in. In a goofy and awkward progression of events he attempts to socialize with the girl, and express some form of interest. Initially, she’s pretty weirded out but by the end of the video she finds something about his honest, yet odd, expression somewhat charming; enough anyway that she dances with him for a brief moment before her food is ready and she leaves.

There’s a specific pair of shots at the end of the video that hit a really strong chord with me. After she dances with him and goes to get her food, he’s continuing to dance in a way that says, “See. I’m actually not that weird. I’m not what most people take me to be at first glance.” It’s like a high he’s chasing, in a way. That sense of recognition. Something worked, and he employs the logic of ‘if then’ conditioning, so if he continues to dance then he’ll continue to get recognized.

Then she leaves and he stops dancing. He nods a little bit, as if to acknowledge that the interaction is over, but he proved to himself that someone noticed him. There’s a sense of bereft acquiescence as he moves to return to his seat, as though he’s struggling with the idea of maybe he was only recognized because he carried some novel bit of entertainment and that his value past that was what he had feared all along; nothing.

He wasn’t noticed before. He was even openly rejected as he attempted to entertain. Sure, there’s a moment of levity in being noticed but was he noticed in the way he really wanted?

Maybe some of the resoluteness in his nod was him having to swallow the bitter pill of realizing that maybe entertaining someone was the only way he’d ever actually be noticed. That maybe he just needed to be content with that, and give up on the notion that someone would notice him even if he wasn’t dancing. While he may or may not have more to offer, that’s all anyone was looking for from him. And that had to be enough. But deep down he knew it wasn’t.

By now my projection is pretty apparent.

At the end of almost every social interaction I feel a variation of this. When I close the door to my house and I’m alone again I wonder where I really stand with people. The constant flood of negative self-talk seize upon the opportunity to take that proverbial ball and run with it.

“They just wanted a way to kill some time. They just wanted to be entertained for a while. That’s all. They aren’t really your friends. They don’t really care. You make them laugh, but if you ever wanted to talk to them about something they wouldn’t want to be there for you. Not really. They might humor you for a while, but it’s just out of kindness. Your rapport with them in a one-way street. You provide entertainment or you listen to them about their troubles, and that’s it. And here are all the reasons why that’s the case.”

Despite my best efforts, sooner or later some argument is posed that feels pretty iron-clad and conclusive. I don’t want to dispel my assumptions by simply asking outright, because that plays into the same negative circle of logic about my interactions being a one way street.

So I ultimately come to the conclusion of the best way to win at this game is simply to not play. So I delve further into my introverted tendencies. I don’t give myself opportunities to make myself feel bad about social interactions. I simply avoid them outright, and I choose loneliness over perceived rejection or relegation. I make myself into the very thing I fear people think of me as; a social tool for their benefit and little else. Making myself into the thing I don’t want to be because I’m worried that might be what people see me as is not exactly an optimal strategy as I look at what I’ve typed objectively. Yet here we are, and here we have been for most of my life.

Story number two.

A person struggles with emotionally closing themselves off. They struggle with feelings of acceptance and decide that, in an attempt to break through these self-imposed barriers, they will do things that fly in the face of their fears. They start a blog, intending to write, without filter, their feelings about different moments in their life. They will post this blog for the world to see, even link it on their social media accounts. The thing is, however, that they find a measure of comfort in knowing that no one’s going to actually read it. Why would they? People don’t care.

Maybe one or two people will be bored enough to skim through a paragraph or two and say, “Hey. That’s pretty deep. Thanks for writing that,” but in terms of any real processing? No. But that’s fine. This person isn’t hoping for an audience. They’re simply hoping to prove to themselves that they won’t explode if they express themselves. Even better would be the possibility that they’d learn that life isn’t over if someone responds negatively to the blog. Someone doesn’t like what I have to say about my feelings. So what? It doesn’t kill me.

And that person can use that as a foundation to maybe open up more.

This person also starts attempting to express themselves in other ways. They start commentating in a game they like. And to their surprise people seemingly really enjoy the effort. He’s entertaining enough, apparently, that they get more and more opportunities to commentate.

This isn’t part of the plan. Much like with the blog, they only started commentating to prove to themselves that it’s okay if people don’t like their honest expression. But people continue to find him entertaining. People continue to read their blog posts.

These attempts at failure somehow lead to what someone would consider success. People tell this person that their blog posts resonate with them. That they find themselves in a lot of the words they write. People want this person to commentate and do more things. They think this person has potential to do some really cool stuff, and that they deserve some really cool opportunities.

But this person still deeply struggles with feelings of fundamental acceptance. This person asks themselves some pretty existential questions. Do people just like me because I’m entertaining? Is that all I’m worth? What if I’m not feeling particularly entertaining a certain day? Do the people I think are my friends suddenly find themselves not particularly interested in me as a person?

Are there expectations for these blog posts now? Has something that was selfishly made for me now become the world’s? Or at the very least has it in the possession of the people who read it? And look forward to more posts?

What if I’m not able to help people like I have before? What if I’m not writing what people expect? What if it’s not happy enough? What if I’m not resolutely resolving feelings? What if things aren’t getting better? What if things are getting worse? Will people not bother to reply? Will they not bother to offer words of encouragement like they had before? How will that make me feel?

Will I come away from these attempts at personal growth feeling worse about myself than I started? I was already at a low place, so what would even lower a place look like?

This person decides it’s just best to not bother writing blog posts at all. At the very least, to only write when a sense of certainty is had that it will hit the checkboxes of expectations he’s assumed and placed upon themselves.

Depression, in the way I understand myself to suffer from it and subsequently interpret it, is all encompassing and is tireless in its endeavor to consume every potentially positive thing that happens in my life. It is the ever vigilant devil’s advocate to every ‘good’ thing, and I am not always equipped to deal with it very well.

It costs me a lot in terms of self-esteem, strong friendships, and a connection to the world at large. Closing myself off, at times, feels like the best option but that brings a cost all its own. It doesn’t save me from the very depression that lead me to want to close off to begin with, but it does potentially give the depression less to corrupt.

It’s like being set on fire, and your attempts to put it out would be to lock yourself in an air-tight room made of glass in hopes that the fire runs out of the oxygen, even though there’s a swimming pool just outside the room.

If you read a lot of the blog posts I’ve written over the past couple of years it would sound like my life is in a really good place. I’ve accomplished a lot of cool things, and have made some serious strides in terms of personal growth. And those things are true. I have an amazing life, and I have people in my life that care about me. I feel very lucky, and try to remind myself every day of how fortunate I am.

But I’ve made a difficult, sobering realization. One I’ve made a few times before, but understand it with an intense vibrance now.

Whether I take anti-depressants or not, I will always deal with depression. It’s not something I will ever beat. It’s not something that will go away. It’s going to dog me at every turn, and the concept of ‘happily ever after’ happiness is a fantasy that ultimately works against me, as I start to feel bad that I’m not that happy in the face of all the good things happening in my life.

The happiness I need to seek is not a ‘destination’ where I’ve defeated depression. The happiness I need is in the process of accepting how my mind works and creating a strategy that deals with my depression as it exists. I need to learn to act knowing that it will always be there.

It’s always been the devil on my shoulder. It will likely always be the devil on my shoulder. I need to make an angel, or find a way to more consistently listen to it if it’s been there. Because I haven’t done a very good job of listening.

And I need to talk to people. I guess. At the very least, I need to accept the plausibility of the idea that people actually do like me for me enough to act on that possibility in spite of how I’m feeling.

It hurts to open up to people and be actually rejected. It also hurts to cut myself off from people in fear of rejection. If I’m going to be hurt either way, I may as well try for the former. I guess. At the very least, opting for the latter hasn’t gotten me where I’d like to be so it’s worth giving the former more of a try.

I guess.