From: llama@pooh.cc.utexas.edu (sine nomine)
Newsgroups: alt.angst
Subject: was i better off depressed?
Date: 13 Dec 92 23:32:36 GMT
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5


bleah, it's raining, and i don't really have anywhere to be or, for
that matter, anywhere i really want to be. which, i spose, is why i'm
here at the lab. 

it's weird. last night, i didn't want to do anything. i made some
nifty herbal tea, talked to a couple of close friends on the phone,
curled up with a book and felt very snug. no parties, no dates,
nothing social. just hanging out in a yellow lamp-light space
surrounded by a dark cold night, half-listening to my housemates'
convo, watching the fire. 

a year ago, when i began sliding into the depression that eventually
cost me my job, an evening like this would have been a horrible
failure. i went to parties both nights of every weekend, regardless of
where or why they were being given. i felt obligated to appear, to
avoid gossip about me later. didn't matter that i loathed most of the
people at them and was tired of the whole incestuous, backstabbing
crowd as a whole; i had a *social life*, dammit! i wasn't a loser --
living in a fishbowl sucks, but at least you feel important when
you're a public figure. i wasn't sitting at home alone on a saturday
night. i belonged somewhere, and if it wasn't such a great place to
belong, well, it had its moments sometimes.

winter became spring, i lost my job, gained thirty pounds, and fell
into a routine: weekdays i stayed home except for trips to the grocery
store once or twice a month. i'd get up around 4 or 5 pm, log on to a
chat board or the net, stay online almost continuously until 4 or 5
am, go to sleep. sometimes people on the chat board would come get me
and we'd go hang out somewhere, though this didn't happen a lot.
friday nights i went religiously to a local gathering of bulletin
board geeks and saturdays there was always a party. all week i
conserved energy so i could spend it all in short bursts over the
weekend and say to myself, "hey, i've still got a social life. i must
be okay."

it didn't matter to me that the social life was futile and boring and
consisted of drinking lots of beer around other people who were
drinking lots of beer. i didn't see anything incongruous about being
in a room full of people 90 percent of whom i held in utter contempt.
hey, so what if they're dull and pompous and so totally walled in by
their narrow little minds they can't even *see* alternatives, much
less think about them? these people are my *friends*.

then i lost my phone line and could only access the net, not the chat
board, and that only if i walked over to campus and logged in at the
lab. my best friend pushed me until i finally got a job. i started
posting to angst. i finally got motivated to get out of the squalid
depression-hole i'd been living in. i started losing weight (25 pounds
since halloween, whee). so i'm pulling out of the depression, more or
less. during this process, i've pretty much ditched my old social
life. i haven't been to a friday-night nerd gathering in six weeks or
so; the last party from this group i went to was back in october
sometime.

so last night was nifty, in a way. i did what i wanted to do, instead
of what i thought i *should* be doing. i didn't end up making stupid
drunken small-talk with people i secretly despise. herbal tea doesn't
cause puking, blackouts, and socially awkward situations, and i woke
up in my own bed with no unwanted partners and a clear idea of how i
got there.

but i kinda miss having something to do. not enough to have gone to
the party last night, certainly, and i doubt i'll be intimately
involved with that group of people again, but i want a new group of
friends to do things with. only i want them to be like my favorite
people on this newsgroup: intelligent, witty, insightful, fun.  i want
to hang out with people i consider equals and i don't know where to
find them. am i doomed to cozy saturdays forever?

the net, and this newsgroup, fill some of my need to interact with
others, but restlessness is taking hold.  i'm not clinically depressed
anymore. i don't want to hide anymore, but i keep running up against
the same problem: how do you do this off the net? there must be other
disaffected, annoyed, cynical bastards out there somewhere, people who
are twisted in ways similar to my own kinks, but fucked if i have any
clue about how to find them.

the whole thing is too beautifully ironic for words.

--
sine | deb
of course, so is most of my life.

Xref: sparky alt.angst:4903 alt.suicide.holiday:3135