I have had this conversation so many times; the euphemisms people use to express their emotions. It's not even hyperbole, these things they say. It's the opposite of hyperbole, unless they happen to be the luckiest people alive. If their assumption were true, why seek sympathy from me? Why disparage the grand institution of depression if it could be characterized by the absence of sensation? If you feel nothing when you're depressed, then by all means let me poke a syringe in your brain so I can mainline these juices into my body. Medical science needs to autopsy you freaks. It would help me.

You feel numb? You feel empty? If I felt 'nothing', or 'empty', or 'numb', I would mow the lawn. I would take my dog for a walk. I would go to work and be productive. I would drink starbucks and call all my friends and tell them why the ending of LOST sucked. Let's be reasonable, the alt-reality was pointless. Why did Jack have a son? Why did they have to protect a glowing rock in a cave? Jacob should have just filled the whole cave with concrete, but I digress.

You know what I feel when I'm depressed? 'Everything' is maybe better hyperbole than 'nothing', but I want to resist that impulse too. I am not going to say, 'I feel everything'. I do feel miserable. I feel stressed.

I think about the girl who dumped me last September, who cheated on me so often it became tortuously surreal. I feel this intense sense of pain associated with every memory we shared together. Of me just getting home from her house, reading a text from her that she was leaving me. That I wasn't suitable for her, 'for a number of reasons'. That she could never, 'commit to a guy like me'.

I'll still lay on my bed, wanting to call her, waiting to hear her voice again so I can apologize profusely for whatever it was she believed made me a bad boyfriend. In 34 years, I have never cheated on any woman. Whenever I say that, I get this uncomfortable, judging stare from people who know what I am and what people like me are capable of. No, I've never cheated. I lock myself into my bedroom and masturbate for 2-3 days straight, fighting fatigue, dehydration and usually by the end of it, painful abrasions, but I've never cheated. It doesn't 'solve' it, but it makes my behavior remarkably better looking 'on paper'.

The sacrifices I make the lock myself in can not be appreciated by normal people and it certainly wasn't appreciated by my by ex, but I will think about her obsessively. I think about a lot of things obsessively and they're always fighting for the spotlight.

I'll get up and pace around my house (I think I'll do that for the next 5 hours until I have to take a shower and go to work), watching television for 15 seconds on each channel for an hour or two, long enough to be annoyed that the program is making it difficult for me to fixate on my misery (LOL), wondering about how pointless my life is, how I've not accomplished anything of value. I feel all the guilt and shame of never applying myself, of skipping out on things because I was stupid.

I let whatever problem consume me until I get so worked up, I force myself on my bed, fold my arms over my chest, take deep breaths and force my eyelids shut (force them with my fingers). Then I'll fantasize about things being better, simple projects that I can get done the next day. This sometimes works for, like, a couple seconds. Teetered to the bed.

It's like a boring, monotonous, minimum wage job. Less-than. A zero-wage job. I feel forced down, anxious, very anxious, starved for attention, but not being able to stand 5 second of company if I should ever have it, self-loathing, angry, fatalistic, but never 'empty', never 'numb', never 'nothing'.

Why would anyone who was ever depressed say that they were those things? It is the opposite of what is true.

As always, if you think otherwise, you can drink or eat something from the toilet (take advantage of either option). LOL Anyway, I just wanted to rant. I can not sleep again tonight.