The supersized delusions of grandeur/perpetual inadequacy combo in my head comes smothered in so much special anxious sauce its drips coat the world. I have no role models, only people I am jealous of and those I feel superior to. No guidance, no realistic picture for my life, only the fear and shame of not living up to expectations. There is nothing I want. I seem productive but the real object of all work I’ve ever done is to foist off the cold feeling life gives me. It is all to fill my ears with petty noise to deafen myself to the voice that speaks in the still moments.

It tells me the truth: You’ve never put your all into anything. You’ve coasted. You aim to fail because it is easier. You know better. You were better.

I love that voice. It makes me feel driven, different. Concerned about the world in a way others are not. But I’m not, really. The voice can only speak its own truth that it knows, and that’s as short-sighted and misguided, as limited as anyone else’s. I’m not hard-working, I am neurotic, filling a gap in myself with activity. Attempting to reach a heaven in my head through frenetic jousts at making the world and myself better. Thinking if I do and do and do I will one day reach a state where I’ll feel okay at the end of the day.

I think I’d need a lobotomy at this point to feel good about myself. To drain off some of the dark research or the idealistic nonsense. Confined to the same space those substances react to produce methane.

I am well employed.

I wrote a book.

I am laughing because when I look back that is what I dreamt of, told myself would make the voice go away.

Happiness is a chemical. A molecule group we crave when we’re not thirsty, hungry, or tired. I know that, as much as I know there is nothing really wrong, this is just what being a self-aware organism is like. I know it’s all in my head. I know this drawn-out emergency we call modern society put it there, and is willing to sell me as many short-term solutions as I’d like.

I also know that writing a blog about depression or whatever the fuck this is makes me seem like I have a grip. Because I took the time to wrap this feeling up in words I must have some insight from it. I don’t. Except that it comes and goes, hour by hour, and I have to make the most of my time when it isn’t around.

I dunno. If I had a non-clumsy way to end this post, I probably would have skipped it and written about something more interesting in the first place.

Don’t stop.