Too busy planning for later, to think about right now

[title inspired by the least important line in Streetlight Manifesto’s ‘A Better Place, A Better Time’. The rest of the song is incredibly beautiful to me, too, but for entirely different reasons. Do me a favour and read the lyrics, alright? Whether or not you can connect the dots, I think you’ll get something out of it.]

        I read something in my psych textbook last year that’s really stuck with me. It was a single-line comment, something a good student knows they won’t be tested on, along the lines of “people with anxiety disorders often feel more in control of their lives when they worry about things.” I can guarantee that if I ask the people I know who’ve taken that exact same course, and read the exact same textbook, most of them wouldn’t even remember that part. What I can also tell you is that it’s more like a subtle reassurance than some sort of powerful feeling of controlling your own destiny. And that it takes a hell of a long time to think about the worst things that might happen, and debate how I should react or whether it’s worth the risk. It doesn’t feel good to take three hours working out a 30 second conversation; but think about what might have happened otherwise! I have to keep doing it, making mental conversation trees, guessing at people’s reactions, because to do otherwise is to give up the illusion of control, and risk facing problems I might not be prepared for.

        As you can probably guess, spontaneity isn’t one of my strengths. Makes me a terrible role player, too.

        The unfortunate problem is that I habitually use most of my downtime to think about these sorts of things. Worse still is the fact that trying to fall asleep is essentially infinite time to worry about things. Lifehacker posted an article this summer about dedicating time to worry - and not doing it during the rest of the day. It’s easier said than done, especially when you have a lot to do (and worry about), and when you’ve spent years replacing sleep with worrying. But it’s definitely something I need to work on, because it’s a big part of why I have trouble with people. Even though I know it’s true, I kind of have to remind myself that nobody is going to remember that time I said something dumb (even if I remember it forever), or expect me to be perfectly eloquent all the time (even if I regret not saying X for days afterwards, and why didn’t I think of that at the time!?). It’s a lot harder to carry on a conversation when I’m trying to keep all those things in mind. And it’s not like I often manage to map things out and predict how someone is going to react. It’s just a reassuring habit I fell into years ago.

        From the outside, you probably can’t tell how hard it is to break out of this pattern. It’s incredibly powerful, and incredibly pervasive. The associations get so strong that relapse is completely inevitable. Years of an almost ritualistic reliance on a seemingly harmless activity don’t go away overnight. Maybe you don’t want to see the harm it causes, or you can’t quite connect the dots. Either way, it sometimes seems a lot easier just to work around it rather than try to change.

        I’ll do it, though. I’m tired of being paralyzed as I hover over the send button, wondering whether I could improve the message (text, IM, e-mail) that I’ve been writing for 5-50 minutes. I’m tired of being tired, because I tried to go to bed early, but instead stayed up for two hours worrying, then woke up in the middle of the night and worried for another hour before falling back asleep. Tired of psyching myself out to the point where I can’t even talk to people, or talk in the presence of people when it comes to class discussion. It might take me six months, or it might take me two and a half years. But I’m tired of not being able to explain this to people, leaving them guessing as to what the problem actually is. I can take care of that problem now, while I work on the rest.

Hey Matt, Whatcha Up To?

        Had a “wonderful” experience this morning of trying to overcome my anxiety enough to speak up in my philosophy of mind class. Something I’ve done before, actually, although I’d never participated as significantly in the class discussion. For whatever reason, just the thought of raising my hand and presenting an argument was enough to leave me shaking due to anxiety. Maybe it was because I wasn’t sitting next to anyone I knew, though pretty much everybody was present (something about essays being assigned raises attendance dramatically). Maybe it was because I was doing more than just asking clarification questions after waiting to see if anyone else would (this might actually be it, because it didn’t bother me when I raised my hand at the start of class to say it was nice to finally read a more cognitive science-y paper). Or maybe it’s something else I haven’t though of yet. I still did it, though, because not only had I done the reading for the first time in weeks, it was like a checklist of all the things I’ve been learning about in other classes. Applications of Ungerleider and Mishkin’s cross-lesion studies to the multiple realizability problem? Hell yeah! Let’s get some actual evidence for our philosophical arguments, please and thank you.

        And yet, I spent most of the lecture alternately shivering anxiously, in anticipation perhaps, and then being frozen in fear after I’d finished talking and opened the floor to responses from the prof and the rest of the class. It’s not a public speaking thing, either, because I had the exact same feelings last night as I debated whether to talk to someone I’ve known for years. Figuratively shaking in my boots (what sort of savage wears shoes indoors? Come on, America) as I went to go knock on the door, though there was some potential for disaster there. Then barely able to express myself, even though I’d already spent more than a month thinking about what I wanted to say, on a pretty regular basis. There’s nothing for me to be afraid of, really, and yet it’s there anyway.

        But I manage! I’m doing pretty alright, lots better than I was anyway. Went to see Repo: The Genetic Opera with a couple of people, and against all odds I enjoyed it a lot. However, I’m not going to recommend that you watch it, unless there’s a shadowcast performing alongside. Have you heard of that? I hadn’t, but here it is in a nutshell: they take a movie, mainly Rocky Horror Picture Show and Repo, and then they have people who act out the scenes in front of it. So you take something that would (probably) suck and not be at all interesting to watch by yourself, and suddenly it’s amazing. It’s one of those “the whole is greater than the parts” kinds of thing. The next show isn’t until February, but I’m probably going to force some people to go see it with me… Hopefully they don’t hate it.

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        On an unrelated note, as for why I haven’t been all that talkative lately, school’s pretty busy right now. I’ve got a midterm thursday and another friday, both of which I’ve barely studied for so far. Hopefully it’ll be ok! One’s a multiple choice exam for my research methods class, which will probably be super easy. The other is in systems programming, and I may not survive. If I do (and against my better judgement), I’m going to go out for the cognitive science social event (the one and only, unless you count D&D) and maybe make a token effort at drinking. Meanwhile, assuming there are no hardware disasters (and I can’t guarantee that), we’re ready to run a few practice tests for the project I’m interning on! After that, it’s time to start running participants and collecting data, which is pretty exciting actually. We took some press photos for the lab, to use for all the “look what sorts of cool research students are doing here!” things. I think I’ll be allowed to post those, and they turned out fairly well actually. I clean up nice, guys.

        Oh, and apparently, interning is a word. Who knew!

Not Antisocial, Just Shy

[title courtesy of this XKCD shirt I’ve always liked, but known it would be stupid to actually wear. Also, I wrote this post… nearly two weeks ago, and since I’ve started talking about it with a few close friends it’s gotten a lot better. I’m only just posting it now because I know the rest of the people who will read it are exactly the people I haven’t spoken to enough, and I’m not sure how you’re all going to react. No pity, alright?]

       Now that classes have started again and I’m starting to see people I never spoke to last year, I’ve realized something strange. Without noticing it, I’ve developed pretty severe social anxiety. To the point where going to meet up with a bunch of linguistics students was physically difficult for me. Thinking about it hours in advance made me sick to my stomach - that was my first big hint. When I got there, I couldn’t even think of things to say, or was always ten minutes behind the current conversation. It was pretty brutal.


        Then I got to thinking about how little things have changed between Brittany and I now that she’s moved in at my mom’s - we see each other physically about as often as we used to speak by text/IM (both of which we’ve mostly stopped doing) when she lived in PEI. And I realized that I’ve been a bit off around her, too, never really knowing what to say and dreading the thought of starting a conversation. And it’s sad to think that one of my closest friends is now my roommate (half the time), and we never hang out, and I say it’s because I don’t want to intrude when I’m really just afraid. And worse is the fact that I’m sitting in the basement, trying to force myself to study, but I wind up being unable to concentrate because I’m just miserable and lonely. And I could just walk upstairs and say “hey, what’s up?” But I don’t. It’s been almost three months, and I haven’t done that once. It’s baffling, honestly, but only when you really think about it. As you can see, it’s taken me this long to notice, so there’s some positive self-deception for you. I’m slightly curious about whether I’m the last person to realize this, and whether I’ve always been like this, but I haven’t had the guts to ask.


        It gets worse, though, because then I think about it some more and realize it’s been a couple of years since I started a casual conversation like that at all. Including over IM. Only two or three years if we’re talking zero conversations whatsoever, but then, an epiphany - I’ve been like this since I first got on MSN in 8th grade. With few exceptions, I’ve always waited for other people to start the conversation or only ever started to talk to them when I had something specific to talk about - a funny webcomic, comment about a new game, whatever. Vael and I talk a lot over IM, but nine times out of ten, he starts the conversation, and the rest of the time I have something to show him or ask him about.

        [Errata: Vael says he counted and it’s roughly 50/50. But I was mainly thinking about a sort of “hey, what’s up” kind of thing that just leads naturally into a conversation. Plus, a lot of the time you don’t actually have anything to talk to someone about yet, so you don’t have much else to say.]

        So suddenly it’s come to light that I’ve never been comfortable starting a casual conversation. You can see how that might be a problem when it comes to getting to know people. It seems like I’ve made most of my friends by accident, considering the number of new friends I made during high school (just Vael) and the number I’ve made since moving to Ottawa (one, a few more depending on how much you lower your criteria for “friends”). Not to mention the piss-poor job I’ve done of keeping the friends I’d already made. And the others I’ve driven away trying to “help” them with all of their problems, because I couldn’t think of anything else to talk about… Or worse, the people I got to know simply because they needed someone to talk to about stuff like that.


        I’m working on it, though. Friday before last, I invited someone over for supper just for the sake of having some company. And I’ve felt a lot better since then, because it was a lot like hanging out with people once upon a time. And I’m not deliberately avoiding sitting near people I kind of know in class, though I’d still feel weird going and sitting down next to them. And thinking about just how deep the problems run has made me realize just how little I need to do in order to improve on my previous behaviour. So how’s that for low expectations! Spoke to a human being today, I’m so proud of myself. But, seriously, this is where psych 101 comes in and I realize I’ve had this avoidance learning thing going on for years. And I don’t intend to keep it up. Which is why I’m writing this, instead of posting sad song lyrics, or about how I’ll be FOREVER ALONE T.T, or how much I identify with Socially Awkward Penguin.


        I’m not looking for pity, and I’m not going to say “this is just how I am” or look for ways to cope with the symptoms (without actually dealing with the real problem). But hey, I have a cell phone and unlimited texting. If you don’t know it/aren’t in Canada, when my IM status doesn’t say I’m busy, feel free to say hello. I’m not ignoring you, and I don’t hate you either. I just don’t know where to start most of the time. But don’t do it too much! I can’t keep relying on other people to start conversations. I’ll be around, anyway. Plus, if you’ve read this far, I can only assume you’re either very interested in my life, or can’t think of anything more exciting to be doing. To both of those kinds of people, you may as well just say hello - I’ve got tons of contact info on facebook if you’ve got me there, or you can scroll down my ugly tumblr page and find a few options.

Love Should Be Selfless, and Thoughts on Cheating

Part 2 of my post from yesterday. If you haven’t read it, this won’t make as much sense. I said that I would write about “how I see love, why I say that Brittany "cheated” on me with an emphasis on the quotation marks, and why I have no problem with it.“ Read on if you’re interested, and if not, you probably hate me by now. Sorry!

        I think the ideal form of love is selfless. If you really, truly love someone, then you should want them to be as happy as possible. If being in love requires you to get something out of it, then you don’t love them as much as you think you do. If I had forced Brittany to stay away from this guy, because I really did think that being with her was the only way I could be happy, that wouldn’t have been love. Or, at least, it would have been showing that I loved myself the most, and cared more about my happiness than hers. I let her go because I knew that if it worked out, she would be happier with him than she ever would be with me. We might have been content together, but because she didn’t truly love me, it wouldn’t be a perfect, happily-ever-after kind of thing.

        This is mainly a romantic thing, because it’s not like you ever formally agree to spend the rest of your life with your closest friends. Still, when you care about someone a lot, you should be more interested in what you can do for them than what they can do for you. Since they (hopefully) care about you the same way, they’ll take care of you just as selflessly. And everyone wins.

        So, as for infidelity specifically, I should start by saying that I wouldn’t ever do something like that to begin with. The fact that I could accept it from my partner doesn’t mean that I condone it. To me, the worst thing about a one-night stand would be if it was kept a secret - that’s a betrayal of trust, which hurts. Who cares about the sex at that point? If they come clean right away and don’t make a habit of it, it’s forgivable. And could you really blame someone if they fell in love with someone else? It sucks, but sometimes people just click. Again, if they keep it a secret and start seeing someone else, that’s intentional and wrong. But it’s love, and if they’d be happier that way, let them go and move on. I do think that we can be monogamous with the right partners, and I’m willing to forgive a lot. And, yeah, I’m tough enough to let someone go so they can be happy. It’s hard to appreciate right away, but I think it’s the best decision to make.

        It never really bothered me that much that Brittany was with this other guy, that she had feelings for him, and so on. It was never a secret - she asked for my permission repeatedly, and I gave it every time, with the one condition being that she not do anything behind my back. If she’d done all of this and pretended our relationship was fine until the day that we broke up, I would have been infinitely more hurt. I would have no issues telling people that she cheated on me. If I were to say that now, it would make it seem like I was victimized - when in reality I personally encouraged her to go after this guy. Yeah, we were "officially” together while all of this was going on, but that really doesn’t matter. She didn’t want to hurt me, but at the same time, she was falling in love with this guy and going back to me would have been impossible. I can’t honestly say “no, you should stop yourself from falling in love, and also you should stay in a relationship where you are content rather than search for one where you are truly happy.” Even if someone could do that, why would they? And why would you want them to?

        Anyway, now you probably understand better why neither of us is honestly worried about old feelings coming back. The people who were worried about that, they don’t know this stuff - they just know that we dated in the past and now I’m offering her a place to stay. I’m still surprised that I’ve never posted about this before, but now I have and now you know! It’s probably not worth the effort to explain all of this to people so that they can understand why we could live together and not consider being more than friends. But the people who know we were together ought to know why we broke up, and not just that we did.

        I mean, man. How did I not write about this before? Still amazed by that.

Catherine, and Some Personal History

I’ve been thinking for the past week about what different people get from reading my tumblr. Random internet strangers probably just read the posts about things they’re interested in. People who know me well will get to know me better. But for people who don’t know me yet, it’s not a perfect window into my life - there are a lot of things that don’t come across all that well in text. I post about the things that interest me, and I post a lot of information about my life, but not so much about more abstract things - what I believe in, what kind of person I am, and so on. There’s not much point in simply telling you those things. because there would be nothing to back it up, and even if you accept that I’m nice because I said so, it wouldn’t really leave much of an impression on you. Trying to show you things like that with words is tough, but I’ll think about it and work on a few drafts to give the internet at large a better idea of who I am.

        I started playing Catherine last night, and aside from being a pretty satisfying puzzle game (as long as you don’t get really stuck on a hard part), it’s an absolutely wonderful thing to experience. I’d be surprised if I got more than ten hours out of it, but the value of playing it can’t be measured in time spent playing. The basic gist is that you guide Vincent, a 32 year old underachiever, through the worst week of his life. First, his girlfriend of five years, Katherine, starts talking about marriage. Then he drinks a bit too much and has a one-night stand with a girl named Catherine. What happens from there depends on the player’s decisions, but it’s a really well-crafted experience.

        If you absolutely love puzzle games, there’s probably $60 worth of gameplay in there, but everyone else should play the game on easy and act as honestly as possible. It’ll get you thinking about what you would do in a given situation, and about relationships in general. Which is absolutely fantastic, and I’m so glad that this is a “mainstream” video game. I mean, ok, it’s not a AAA blockbuster release, but it’s not some budgetless, vague indie game either. It’s a game that deals with marriage, cheating, responsibility, the nature of relationships… It’s a work of art in every definition of the word.

        So I’ve been thinking a lot since I started playing it, and naturally one of the things I’ve been thinking about is infidelity. Apparently, I’ve actually never written about this before, which is surprising because of what happened between Brittany and I. It’s kind of an important detail, which makes it strange that I’ve never mentioned it. It also means I have to write about it now, in order to get into the stuff I want to say. Alright, so, here’s the quick and dirty version. When we were in 9th grade, Brittany got involved with a guy a year younger than her, and she was really serious about him. It ended badly, she did her best to get over it, and then in November of 10th grade we started dating again. In PEI, high school doesn’t start until 10th grade, so when we moved onto high school she didn’t really see the guy until the fall of 11th grade.  Before too long, despite having a girlfriend, he started flirting with her. She was wary of him because he proved to be a supreme asshole the first time, but I knew she was drawn to him in a way she’d never been drawn to me, and so I gave her permission to talk to him and braced for impact. Fast forward a few months, and by November things are very serious between them and we finally break up ten days before our anniversary.

        I don’t think I need to get into what happened between them after that, but suffice to say that he was actually worse than a supreme asshole. An uber asshole, if you will, the horrible embodiment of all the terrible things women expect from men. Meanwhile, I had encouraged my girlfriend - who I loved dearly, and who was at the time my one source of happiness - to leave me. In the end, her relationship with him made her reevaluate her feelings for me, and there ended the possibility of us getting back together. Understandably, our relationship became strained as things went on, and we spoke less and less often. Eventually it seemed like we couldn’t even manage to carry on a conversation. Considering she was my only close friend, the only person I thought I could share my secrets, doubts, and fears with, this was hard for me. I was incredibly lonely, and of course I spoke occasionally with my friends and family about this stuff, but it was this loneliness that led me to meet Vael and open up to him.

        What I realized, over time, was that I missed Brittany as my best friend far more than I missed her as my girlfriend. We went from speaking all day, every day to never speaking at all, and that alone was hard. Not having anyone to talk to about personal stuff was worse. I don’t remember the exact details of what happened, but at some point I must have told her this and asked if we could “just be friends.” Yeah, I said that, and I said it after we’d broken up. Delicious irony, if you can ignore my crying, desperately lonely 16-year-old-self long enough to laugh about it. Of course there were issues to work through, and of course I struggled with my feelings for her. After all that time, I couldn’t just snap my fingers and only think of her as a friend. But in the end, it all worked out, and now we’re friends and she’s living in my mom’s house. It’s been almost a week now, and it hasn’t been at all awkward for me (although I’ve been at my dad’s house this whole time). She doesn’t find it weird being there, and I assume being around me is no different than it was a month ago. Which is to say I haven’t asked about that, but maybe I should.

        SO OK NOW WE’RE BACK TO CATHERINE AND THE THINGS IT MADE ME THINK ABOUT. Now I can tell you how I see love, why I say that Brittany “cheated” on me with an emphasis on the quotation marks, and why I have no problem with it. Except that when I say now, I actually mean tomorrow, because this is really long. And the chances of people reading it all probably increase when it’s split up. So, that post will go up tomorrow morning, and I hope you all enjoy it!

Improve the world, and be happy!

[Alternatively titled: How I Learned to Stop Being Suicidal and Love Life]

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine told me they were feeling suicidal. Don’t worry - things have turned around completely, and this friend is feeling happy for the first time in a long while. Still, it made me think about the way I used to feel when I was suicidal - how I felt when I was 10, and the slightly more refined thoughts I had during junior high and high school. It made me realize how much I’ve grown up, and I thought it was worth sharing. I’ll try to be concise! Sometimes you have to explore a few tangents, but I’ll try to keep them relevant.

        I gave a quick history in my Depression post last year, and I touched on my suicidal thoughts as well. One thing I forgot to mention was the feeling that I had nothing to live for. When I was 10, I thought that I was so smart and wanted to do great things - but I knew that the world doesn’t work that way and figured I’d wind up in a crappy office job, living a “normal” life. I was just a kid, you know? The life of an adult, in my mind, consisted solely of their job. It never occurred to me that I could have a normal job, and still do great things.

        I wanted to improve the world, though, and since I wouldn’t do it at work, I thought it was impossible. Then I thought I could do it by taking myself out of the picture. When I realized that would only make things worse, I looked for other ways to make the world a better place. I figured that if I could improve at least one thing, no matter how small, I would have lived a worthwhile life. When I met Brittany in junior high, I decided my one thing would be to help her. I figured I could help her with her problems, and then she’d go off and be happy and it would all be thanks to me. I didn’t think that would take too long, and after that, even if I killed myself, I would have made the world a better place. It never quite worked out that way, but I held onto the idea that I could make people’s lives better in some small way and live a good life.

        I knew that I couldn’t kill myself if anyone would be left behind to mourn me and blame themselves for my death, so I decided I would have to disappear quietly. The day no one would notice I was dead, I could slip away and that would be that. I figured that I could leave home after high school and gradually lose contact with my family, and then I’d just have to make sure they couldn’t trace my identity after I died. I felt that it was inevitable that everyone in my life would leave me, so when that happened, I’d be free to end it. “Unfortunately” for my tenth grade self, I’ve made new connections and gotten closer to everyone else, more or less foiling this plot.

        You know how sometimes you can’t figure out whether something actually happened, or you just had a dream and thought it happened? I get that sometimes, except I can’t remember whether I said something or just thought about saying it. Either way, in high school I once said (or thought I said) that I “wanted to be happy when I grew up.” Which is super dramatic, and sad, and that’s what really made me want to say it. I was also trying to say that it didn’t matter what I “was when I grow up,” in terms of what career I chose - as long as I had enough to survive and something else to make me happy, I’d be ok.

        What I realized, thinking about all of this, is that I’ve done it. I grew up. I’m happy with my life, and I’ll still be happy no matter where things go from here. That’s not to say that everything is perfect; I just know that I can deal with and overcome pretty much anything. I’m happy with who I am, and I think I’m a good person. I doubt I’m radically changing the lives of everyone I meet, but I’ve made good friends and I’m helping out whenever I can. Enough to say I’m a net positive influence on the world, at least, which was always the plan. And that’s enough to make me happy!

Old friend, new roommate

Should I apologize for not posting while I’m on vacation? I feel guilty about it anyway, but I’m thinking most people focus on their vacation and don’t post at all. Well, I love you too much to stay away for long. Also, I can’t help but think up tumblr posts when I should be sleeping, and the best cure for that is to actually write one before bed.

        If that’s not a significant caveat, I don’t know what is.

        Anyway, I have news! News big enough for its own post, even. It’s a big change, technically, but at the same time I’m hoping for a minimal amount of changes to accommodate it. If that makes sense. Ideally, I’ll be able to continue working at the same pace I have been and life will go on as usual, except with an extra person living in my house.

        I’ll skip the long story of how we got to this point and summarize: Brittany is moving in at my mom’s place, and she’ll stay there while I’m at my dad’s. I’m giving up my bedroom, but I prefer to sleep on the futon in the basement anyway, so all that’s left is to figure out where I’ll move my “office.” No big deal, although everybody’s worried about us living together, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.

        If you’ve been reading my tumblr long enough, you probably know Brittany as my ex-girlfriend. But we broke up two and a half years ago now, and I don’t think our status as an ex-couple (do people say that? makes sense to me) defines our relationship anymore. I mean, yeah, we dated and we broke up - but there’s no tension, no unresolved issues, none of the things you would expect when you’re meeting someone’s ex for the first time. And the more time I spend with her now, the more comfortable I am with the way things are - we’re friends, the same way I’m friends with Vael, Sebastian, or Max.

        I’ve been offering to let Brittany stay with us pretty much since we decided to move to Ottawa, mainly because I’ve always thought her family treats her terribly. Her mom has been threatening to kick her out recently, or at least make her pay rent, which is difficult considering how few jobs are available in Summerside. Ottawa, on the other hand, has many more opportunities. So I asked my mom if she could stay with us, because it would be cheaper for her than getting an apartment in Summerside, and she’d have better odds of saving up money for school. Fast-forward to our vacation, and Brittany came out to dinner with us. One of the first things my mom says is “so Brittany, are you coming back to Ottawa with us?” At first she said maybe, and then there was much discussion and working out of details, and now the answer is yes.

        I figure I’ll be introducing her as my friend from now on, and that’ll avoid plenty of awkward situations where people misunderstand or assume things. Not like it’ll be a secret that we dated, but if it comes up, I’ll just say she turned me into a newt and then I got better. Or something along those lines. I just want to say that I got better and make it clear that it’s a Monty Python reference.

        Anyway, that’s that. There’s not really a whole lot to say aside from re-assuring everyone about the way things are between us now, so there you go. Consider yourself assured!

        tl;dr: my ex-girlfriend is going to be my roommate, but it’s not what you think

Now that I’ve started tagging my posts, I’m getting followers from random corners of the ‘net who are probably only interested in one portion of what I post. Unfortunately, this isn’t a dedicated gaming blog or a blog about anime or any one specific thing. It’s my personal blog, so it’s only about those things insofar as they’re a part of who I am. I wouldn’t bother to follow someone if I wasn’t interested in most of their posts, but that’s just the way I do things.

        As I’ve mentioned before, this isn’t some expertly curated internet persona. I’m not trying to present some ideal version of myself and get thousands of readers. I’m just sharing myself with anyone that’s interested, including my flaws (not that I have many… right?!). Looking back, there are some posts that I probably shouldn’t have made, and a number that I wouldn’t have bothered to make now. But that’s ok, because they’re wholly representative of who I was when I wrote them. I can read them and remember how I felt at the time or think about how much I’ve changed.

        Just keep that in mind if you ever decide to brave my archives.

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        On an unrelated note, I’m starting to feel a bit guilty about how I’ve been spending my time lately. Having failed spectacularly thus far to establish a new circle of friends in Ottawa, I’ve got nothing to do other than hang out by myself and do whatever I feel like doing. Watch a bit of anime, play three different games for an hour each, whatever. It hasn’t been particularly stressful, but it’s not like I’m having the time of my life.

        I’m looking at forcing myself to do something productive, but I… don’t really want to. I guess I should mention that, for better or for worse, I do have a job. More on that later. It doesn’t start until July, though, so I’ve got some time to relax. Should I really spend that time working on something I don’t really want to do, like learning C? I guess that could help me get a job next summer. But I have a hard time caring right now. I don’t think I’d feel particularly fulfilled if I were working on that. Which is what I’m looking for, really - something I can be proud to have accomplished. Just not sure what that is at the moment.

In the meantime, take these pills

You already know that I used to be depressed, right? If that’s a surprise to you, read that first. I haven’t read it since I first wrote it, so I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m sure it’s ok though.

        The reason I say that is because I’ve been kind of doubtful for the past month or so since we got into the psychological disorders section of my psychology class. The “worst case scenario” they describe for depression is being absolutely incapable of functioning normally. Not getting out of bed for weeks, stuff like that. “Heaven forbid, you might even become suicidal” quipped my professor. Given that I always managed to scrape by, I guess that means my depression wasn’t really that bad.

        That is, if you accept the “it could be worse, so it’s not that bad” form of logic. It’s probably better to place depression (I’m sure the analogy would work for other problems, too) on a sort of exponential scale similar to the Richter scale used for earthquakes. A 2.0 earthquake is 10 x 10, while a 4.0 earthquake is 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 - a lot more than twice as bad. Being unable to get out of bed is a totally different level of magnitude than having a life devoid of joy and happiness, but I don’t think that changes things. It’s way worse, but the latter is still bad.

        The other thing I kind of want to rail against is what my professor said about becoming suicidal being the end of the line for depression. That’s really not the case. Again with a math analogy, because they’re super easy, becoming suicidal is probably more like the area of a rectangle. Being depressed for a long time (length) is just as bad as being extremely depressed (width). A rectangle that’s 10 x 4 has as much area as one that’s 4 x 10. Claiming that only people who are as depressed as you can be will become suicidal is just false.

        So, in sum, I’d still say that I was depressed and that it sucked a lot. It feels pretty distant to me, now, so it’s easy to say it wasn’t so bad - but only if I forget what it felt like at the time.

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        Now here’s where this post becomes relevant: my brother is incredibly similar to me. All of the reasons I became depressed, all the despair I had in my little ten year old mind, are just as relevant for him as they were for me. I know this sounds stupid, but it’s hard being a smart kid, especially when being smart doesn’t mean you’ll succeed. He’s as smart as I ever was, probably smarter when it comes to math and science. But he isn’t getting the grades I did, which is just unfair. He wants to be an eccentric math professor, and I can totally see him being that eccentric math professor, but the universities aren’t going to see it that way when they look at his marks.

        Making matters worse is the fact that my parents expect everything out of him that they expected of me, and he’d naturally have as much trouble dealing with that as I did. It’s hard being perfect all the time, you know? But I escaped that by taking those expectations into myself - my parents would probably accept 80’s at university, but I want the 90’s for myself. And I get them, with enough effort. Or with very little effort (usually) in junior high and most of high school.

        Except he isn’t getting those grades all the time. My dad gives him a really, really hard time for that. My mom is better with it, but she still pushes him.

        Plus we moved away from all his friends. He’s got a couple here, but I don’t think there’s anyone he’s really close to. Certainly nothing like what I had at his age, which was an immense help to me.

        In short, my brother is depressed.

        My mom brought it up with our doctor (or some doctor, at any rate) and they said “we’ll get you to a psychologist in a month or so.” Ok, great. Give him someone to talk to and work through his problems. Then they said “in the meantime, have him take these antidepressants.”

        You can probably guess I have a problem with that. You don’t just give people treatment without any sort of diagnosis! If someone walks in and says “I have a heart condition,” you don’t give them pills and send them off for a month. Pills are meant to solve physiological (chemical, biological, etc.) problems, and they do that by making physiological changes. Changes in your physiology, especially in brain chemistry, screw with your body until it can adjust. That’s why medication has side effects. You know why antidepressants sometimes say “may cause suicidal thoughts”? Because they mess with your neurotransmitters (like hormones, but in the brain), and if the problem isn’t related to neurotransmitters, you’ll be creating symptoms that were never there.

        Long story short, on average, people tend to become more suicidal in the first few weeks of taking antidepressants. He’s been on them now for about two weeks, with some pretty bad side effects (incredibly dizzy, slept all day on sunday) but I don’t think he was suicidal to the point of actually hurting himself. What if he had been? What if he never got to see that psychologist in a month, because he didn’t adjust well to the pills and couldn’t take any more?

        Even aside from all of that, there’s the simple fact that psychological disorders are caused by more than just neurotransmitter problems. There are social issues (family life, friends, etc.), cognitive issues (bad thought habits > depression > bad thought habits), pre-existing conditions to consider (personality disorders, general physical problems) and plenty of other things that contribute. Antidepressants aren’t going to help someone with an inferiority complex, or an abusive partner, or a bad habit of blaming themselves and being pessimistic. That is why a psychologist studies for many years to make a diagnosis and (hopefully) take all the possibilities into account before beginning the appropriate treatment. And that’s without even getting into the possibility that there’s a vicious circle going on (negative thoughts > low serotonin levels?), leading to treatment of symptoms instead of the underlying cause.

        Anyway, people are sometimes bad at their jobs and make irresponsible choices.