We already write the most honest personal ads we want to, by definition. But still, whenever I try to fill out a profile I struggle. Not just what should I include? but also how honest should I be? Any outcome feels like failure. If I write anything honest about my depression, it feels whiny and supremely unsexy. If I write only about high points in my life (usually from the past), I feel like a liar.
Feeling like I should hide it isn’t merely a matter of taboo. I’m quite somewhat open and honest about my depression with my family, my children, my coworkers, and my few friends. And although I know (intimately and painfully) that it’s hard to separate what depression-brain says is true from what I might otherwise believe is true, I think I do believe an aspect of my discomfort expressed above is true.
Depression is supremely unsexy.
I’ve come to think of depression as anti-life. Bertrand Russell wrote in The Conquest of Happiness that to avoid depression, to be happy, one should seek zest. The enjoyment of some aspect of life; better, all aspects of life. The images of sex and sexiness we have in our culture drip with life. Even the emo stereotype of the sad girl or moody loner boy have in their imagery undercurrents of life — especially of sex. Sure I’m sad, but I still want to fuck you. You can save me. In reality, when one can’t get out of bed one doesn’t much want to fuck, either.
It’s more than cultural. Depression is a black hole with multiple metaphoric meanings. It has its own gravitational pull that sucks in those around it, dragging them down to the event horizon of despair. Depression is itself depressing.
Love conquers all. Except depression. That love does not prevent depression, that love does not pull your lover out of it, shakes one’s faith that love is paramount. Our love should be stronger than this depression. That it isn’t, that love is only second most powerful, that love can cower and hide at any moment while your partner retreats within themself becomes a festering wound of insecurity.
Love can live beside it with care and understanding. But only beside it, and only with the deepest of loves. Most parents will not abandon a depressed child. You would not abandon your best friend. But everyone else? As they push you away, you’ll withdraw. By the time you’re an adult you’ve probably done it several times. I don’t blame you. I’ve done the same.
Depression is supremely unsexy.
Outside of minor childhood precursor feelings around divorce and a some sense of abandonment, my first memory of a true depression is around the breakup I had early in high school with my first real love. If I didn’t completely shut down, I slowed down. I lost joy in life, and therefore in our relationship. But the relationship was also one of my only real sources of connection and love, and I sensed that I was ruining it. Who would want to be with someone too miserable to have any fun? And so I knew she would break up with me. I knew it was going to happen for months, I obsessed about it, I fretted over it, and… of course she broke up with me.
I took it overly seriously, yes. What I described is a normal teenage experience, yes. We would have broken up for some reason anyway, and the true cause of our actual break up may not even have been about how miserable I was. But it was the start of a pattern that continued through my life. I would suffer a bout of depression, and my relationship would end. The causality is probably that both life and relationships are hard at times; I didn’t have the emotional toolset to deal with the stressors properly; difficulties would therefore start a cycle of depression; and then that would be worth ending the relationship over. But I didn’t have a conception of stressors and coping strategies. So instead it was always this: I get depressed because I am a terrible person and it inevitably ruins all of my relationships.
Marriage felt like a repudiation of that. Sort of in the comedic sense of why are these married people so smug? They’ve only had one less failed relationship than I have way, but with deeper internal meaning. I would get depressed, and she would stick around, and it would pass, and we were still together. As the growth of one of those true loves that can live beside depression, it felt validating. I can’t be a terrible person, depression can’t be all there is to me, because someone sees more and they’re here with me in proof of it.
Having my wife leave me and tell me that from the start she was in it for the wrong reasons was a devastating blow to my self esteem.
I found a girlfriend very quickly. Far too quickly, before any kind of healing could have possibly taken place. I was honest with her about past depression — as honest as words can be without experiences — and she was honest with me about hers as well. We had a nice few months, and then we had to confront the realities of learning to date again and be with someone new after we each just got out of decade long marriages. I couldn’t manage it, and I got depressed. Not in the abstract way I’d told her about, but in the concrete lived way. After days of silence I broke up with her. When she finally left she said, “You’re a different person.”
That’s what it feels like on this side of it. While depressed, I’m a different person. I don’t know it then; then the memories I have when I wasn’t depressed are from another person. I not only don’t but can’t and never have enjoyed the sunshine. But that was the first time I really heard that it feels that way from the outside, too. I’m a different person to them. This one is supremely unsexy. They don’t say that part, and wiser and less depressed people than me will see the flaws in the argument.
Starting a relationship feels like I am trying to see you. Having dating relationships end feels like I’ve seen enough. My marriage felt like I see you and I accept you, until I felt told I see you and I don’t, which is much worse than not being seen at all.
We want to be seen and accepted whole. Not a slice of us, not a facet, not a curated persona, but the full and honest totality of ourselves. So what would a raw and honest personal ad say?
They say dating is the process of figuring out why the other person is single, so let’s take a shortcut: I suffer from depression, and have for my whole life. Double dip: major depressive disorder with persistent depressive disorder. Low almost all the time and dangerously low some of the time.
I’ve done therapy, I’ve done a few classes of antidepressants. They work, some. But inevitably a cycle happens again. It’s been so much and so long that I can’t untangle causation for the major events in my life. What’s caused by depression, and what’s caused by me? Is there a difference? Is there a me without depression? Is there a better to get?
Sometimes I shut down. I mean silence and hermitage level shutting down. In college I missed about 6 weeks of class each semester from sleeping until 3pm. It’s amazing how you can compensate with a little cleverness though. It’s not usually so long these days; sometimes I only shut down for a night. Home from work, hate the world, in bed by 7.
Maybe that’s just adulthood and responsibilities and not being able to shut down for so long. Nowadays it eats at me slowly, and my behavior gets worse and worse. As I come to hate myself I can’t believe anyone would love me, either. As I see the realities of life and how they conflict with some rising crippling perfectionism, I get hyper critical. That’s no fun on the other end, trust me. I’m easy to slight, and my patience hits rock bottom.
It’s a big world, though. I can be blacklisted from one company for not playing well with others, yet make an exorbitant salary from another, at least until another depressive cycle when I’ll quit. So yeah… we’ll see how long this current job lasts. I’ve only made one colleague cry so far.
What am I doing this weekend? It’s always nothing. I also have exactly one friend, but he doesn’t live in town. Through personality or habit or both I’m a bit anti-social. Give me some alcohol around some introverts and I can liven things up though. At least, years and years ago when people invited me places that was the case. I tried to go out recently, and I could barely function.
My house is constantly a wreck. I’ll keep it clean while we’re dating, but boy oh boy is that gonna backslide.
If you’d met me in my 20s I’d probably have seemed sexy and mysterious and like I was going places as I talked a lot about my plans for what I wanted my life to be like. But then I gave up on all of them, got married, had kids, got too fat, got too thin, experimented with polyamory (plot twist), quit about a dozen jobs, got divorced, and forgot what I enjoy or if I ever enjoyed anything at all. Not all in that order.
See what I mean a bit? What’s depression, and what’s just me being a fuckup? Am I a fuckup because I’m depressed, or vice versa? It’s all muddled.
But I’m writing this, so I suppose I haven’t completely given up on myself quite yet. I’m rebuilding my life, and myself. If I’m a fuckup, I don’t want to be, and I’m trying to work on it. I’ve always been kind and compassionate when I haven’t been hyper critical and irrationally angry. But I’ll save my strengths and positive traits for my next personal ad. I’ll title that one, things left unread because wtf, but thank you for saving me the time.
Maybe in a few more years of healing.