/dead/ - dead

Nothing to do in here, nothing to do outside.
Therapists offer empty advice. Most people can't relate, or are too frightened to admit that they relate to this feeling of emptyness. Their behavior is understandable; if you say how you really feel, people call you a downer, they act offended that you could feel so bad, they act offended that anyone's experience could differ so much from their own. The social consequences of honesty are often effective at encouraging lies. You get ostracized if your experience doesn't line up with the expectations others have cultivated for how the world works. If you aren't motivated by the things they expect everyone to be motivated by, they don't believe you. So people hide it, most of the time, they try as hard as they can to push it down so that even if they feel the same way that you do, the impression given is that you are alone.

When the acceptable outlets for this fail, as they often do, there is no accepted course of action. There's just emptyness. "Depression" as it's popularly defined today doesn't even describe it - people today think depression is a brief interruption to an ordinary pattern of self-worth. That sounds like a joke, but it's what polite society accommodates. There's no room for people who never feel good about themselves or about anything else, but there's also no room for meaningful action. Try for a peaceful exit, and people will act scared and maybe throw some empty platitudes or already-failed advice at you. Express a will to use your lack of desire to live constructively, and people who claim to want change will turn away. For them, every desire for action can only be accepted at the stage of catharsis. They are such aggressive do-nothings that they can't even fathom that anyone would do anything else. You're supposed to value your life… you're supposed to sit around consuming slop, pretending like you don't just want to die all the time. The "happy" life, the "constructive" life, is to still work but to accomplish nothing, to fear death because you are waiting to die.

It's so strange to me.