Anti-Depressant.

Making everything chemically okay in the brain is doable, and it helps some people function in society.

It might help to remember that all of society is a construct of our collective minds. Note also the total dysfunctional nature of society. I'm not saying correlation implies causation in this case, but it does feel symptomatic.

We created a society that is rife with suck. To deal with that suck we have to medicate our minds so we see the suck...less. Otherwise we can't fucking bear to go to work, we can't fucking bear to look at ourselves, our partners, our children. Everything feels like a disappointment when we really look hard at it, because everything we've been told to care about is the concern of minds that aren't ours, specifically. So yeah, every promotion is thrilling, then awful. Every birthday is sweet and bitter. Every childbirth is beautiful and awful. Every Christmas is less magical than the last until one day you wake up and unwrap presents bought on a credit cards near maxed, and can't think about anything but how many hours you had to work only to fall so far behind. So why not have 10, 12, 15 beers? Third, half, near gallon of wine? Two, four...fuck it, why not the whole damn bottle of pills? Yeah, why not?

Because fuck it. Yeah, those societal concerns...getting a nice car, big house, paying off debt, having a hot partner who'll swallow...yeah, they're not yours specifically, but getting one of those feels like an accomplishment. However hollow and surreal, it feels NICE to have what everyone's talking about...for even a split second, the understanding a person gets when they switch from a shitty beater car to their first REAL luxury vehicle...oh it all makes sense then. That's not finding meaning. That's making meaning. And that's where all the living is done. Those split seconds of understanding what everyone's on about.

First orgasm.

First buzz.

First diploma.

First belly laugh.

Pulling away some essential layer of confusion surrounding the "why" of "why keep living?" are in those moments of understanding.

And yeah, of course people go their entire LIVES never having known even the scope and size and multitude of questions they could be asking of their inner beings...some people are republicans, after all...and some of us have to go to public schools...but is it alright to look at the lack of self-reflection in the people around us as the new normal? No. Of course not.

The best of us battle against that new normal, that want for average. Teachers. Real teachers. People who beg you to think. Not that asshole who tried to drill into your mind with the blunt instrument of of their cynicism and 10 year old textbooks so they can go home and collect a pension in a couple decades.

And if it isn't our job to try and enlighten those around us, and we'd rather not frustrate ourselves...at least we should be able to tone down the volume knob on how awful everything is. Anti-depressant. Binge drinking. Whoring. Sex addiction. Internet Addiction. Drug addiction. Anything. Just shut up this nagging sense that at the bottom of everything is this core of darkness that reeks of hopeless and meaningless annihilation. Just shut up this voice in me that says that I'm not good enough for me, and that even if I were, in the larger picture, it's still not good enough for anyone else, and even if I overcame all of THAT, there's STILL no satisfaction to be gained, because nothing truly has meaning outside of that which I give meaning, and the only frame of reference I have for "that which is meaningful" is what I've been told by....society.

Whatever, and ever, amen.