"Why" Depression Sucks

Hey guys, wait three years for me to get over the resentment and then ask me why I have zero self-esteem despite all sorts of empirical evidence that I'm fucking awesome.

If Only, If Only

If I could get paid to get high and maintain this blog, these are some of the things I would write ALL THE TIME, rather than planning to possibly write them SOMEDAY:

Girls Who Kick Ass: Why They Matter - Cassie & Rachel

Girls Who Kick Ass: Why They Matter - Harriet M. Welsch

Girls Who Kick Ass: Why They Matter - Elphaba Thropp

Girls Who Kick Ass: Why They Matter - Sunshine

Snarky Episode Guides: Ryan Reacts to The Vampire Diaries, Gilmore Girls, Charmed, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, Veronica Mars, etc.

High-Tweeting the other 142 episode of Buffy

Seven Ways to Destroy a Smartphone Without Waking Your Neighbors

Seriously Serious Toy Reviews

Baked Baking: Some Useful Tips THAT MIGHT JUST SAVE YOUR LIFE

The Very Young Witch & the Very Old Vampire

13 Witches I Fucking Hate
     (Prue Halliwell, Phoebe Halliwell, and eleven others . . . ?)

Snarky "Episode" Guides: Ryan Reacts to Every Animorphs Book Ever

Serious Thoughts on a Serious Topic: Ryan Reads Comic Books
     (Runaways, Fables, Spider-Girl, Y: The Last Man, maybe even The Sandman)

Boring People: How to Spot Them & How to Stop Them

Apples: The Greatest Food on Earth, Period

Why I Wish Todrick Hall Was the Actual Love of My Life

(I can't think of a snappy headline for this one, but it would be such PURE, UNADULTERATED fun to review my favorite Disney movies.)

Six Ways a Protagonist of Color Would Change the Face of Superhero Movies Forever . . . Or Not

How (and Why) to Honestly Stop Giving a Fuck

How (and Why) to Stop Letting Stupid People Be Famous

Why ~YOU~ Are an Artist and It's Awesome

AND SO FORTH
AND SO ON

"My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it."

I do not want to write this entry.

(While we're on the subject: I do not want to watch Korra, even though all four remaining episodes of season two - which, on the whole, has been very relevant to my interests, re: depression vs. magic - will be available online tonight; I do not want to eat anything for the rest of the night even though I haven't eaten very much all day; I do not want to eat anything for the rest of the week even though I haven't eaten very much all week; I do not want to get high and feel better about everything; I do not want to get high and feel nothing because I'm too busy being distracted by everything; I do not want to get high and feel nothing because I'm too busy being distracted by my own thoughts about words and letters and sounds and why any of them mean anything; I do not want to take pictures of any of my Ponies; I do not want to take pictures of anything else; I do not want to think a thing; and, just for twenty-six minutes, one for every year of my life, I do not want to be me.)

For the last two weeks or more or less keeping track of time has never been my strong suit, but it's gotten literally impossible of late, Tony my BFF my best friend forever my true best friend has avoided or missed or ignored or forgotten all & any attempts at contact of any kind.

Just in case that wasn't clear enough:

I have called him AND IT HAS BEEN FOR NAUGHT.

I have texted him AND IT HAS BEEN FOR NAUGHT.

I have called him and left multiple voicemails asking him to text me AND IT HAS BEEN FOR NAUGHT.

I have texted him and begged him to call me because I'm worried about him AND IT HAS BEEN FOR NAUGHT.

I have sent him messages on (ugh) Facebook AND IT HAS BEEN FOR NAUGHT.

I have tweeted him AND IT HAS BEEN FOR NAUGHT.

I have asked more than a few people who used to work with both of us if they've seen or heard from him lately. None of them have. Some of them volunteered to try to track him down for me, and they did, and apparently he's "doing alright," which they know because he has told them in text messages, so we can conclude that his phone still works and he hasn't forgotten how to use it, which might lead a person who wasn't cursed with Depression with a capital D to hope that he might send me a text that at the very least said "yo calm da FUCK down ha" -

But he hasn't.

Even though I have made it crystal.freaking.clear that I am legitimately worried & confused & upset by this whatever the hell is going on (because, let's face it, people do not "lose touch" in 2013 unless one of them chooses to do so).

So now I am legitimately worried & confused & upset, AND I am freaking the fuck out

because more than a dozen other people have also been making me feel ignored, and there's no way they can all be doing it on purpose so they can accuse me of worrying too much after it's over (. . . right?)

and if one more so-called friend takes the time to leave a comment or send a text to explain that they are "too busy" to call me to make sure I'm not contemplating anything stupid, even though it takes twenty seconds to leave a comment or send a text, so it might theoretically be possible to call me because they know I would fucking drop everything to call them if they were freaking the fuck out, I'm going to fucking punch somebody in the stomach until I get the sense that I've caused internal bleeding.

The sick thing is, two people HAVE dropped everything to give me a call, and I really really appreciate them both for that, but all I can think about is

WHY ISN'T TONY SPEAKING TO ME and WHY AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SENSES A DISTURBANCE IN THE FORCE BECAUSE TONY ISN'T SPEAKING TO ME AND THAT IS NOT FUCKING NATURAL

I want a nap.

Look, I've learned about depression enough to hear it when it starts whispering to me, but the thing is:

When my depression gets this bad, almost but not always, the only person I actually feel like talking to until it gets a little less bad
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          is Tony.




I realize this sounds kind of like a suicide note.
It isn't.

I was tempted to disable comments on this entry.
I didn't. Please don't make me regret that.

SERIOUS HOLY COWS

http://www.refinery29.com/2013/11/56812/asmr

YOU GUYS. You know how I'm always saying "Friendship is Magic makes me cry like a bitch" or "girls who kick ass give me storygasms" or "magic, which is important because it's a metaphor, really does it for me"? I never really thought about this! I just figured everyone got storygasms and mine were just more intense than most people's because, well, most people aren't me.

Also, I never noticed that I should have been noticing this until I actually read the whole article, but certain non-story stimuli do it, too, and I have NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE.

Also-also, I recently reasoned that maybe my capacity to get really happy about really mundane things was some sort of sick trade-off for being cursed with depression (because, you know, happy & unhappy are all up to the chemicals in your brain). Is that completely crazy?

My mind! It is blown!

Post-fucking-script!

The big sister I never wanted but apparently really needed posted this link to (ugh) Facebook a few days ago, and I didn't read it at the time even though I was intrigued. Tonight, I reminded myself to remember that I should finally get around to reading it after giving myself the following spontaneous therapy session pep talk epiphany orgy on Twitter:

My eyes feel spicy.
If that made sense to you, you might be high enough for Reading Rainbow.

It was more than 140 characters, but Adam & I had a really intense conversation about the Mane Six about twenty minutes ago.

Speaking of! How can anypony refuse to give #EquestriaGirls a chance after listening to its theme song remix?
#ElementOfHonesty

Honesty + Kindness + Laughter + Generosity + Loyalty = MAGIC
MAGIC = Ryan always beats Depression, even when he forgets how to fight it.

"I'm only intimidating because you're intimidated."
Being right all the time is less fun than you might imagine.

I've had this recurring dream where I'm screaming but no one can hear me since my mom got remarried when I was nine. Cause & effect.

Oh my fucking God. That (my last tweet) is precisely why I'm so comfortable with the whole "dying alone is my destiny" thing.*




____________________
*Y'all, for real. I understand that it's not even sort of a healthy mindset right now, but putting it together (ON MY OWN, JUST BECAUSE I WAS HIGH AND KIND OF BORED) and figuring out why it makes so much sense to me felt so good. Actually, it still feels good as I talk about how it felt good at the time.

Which is extra super crazy, because the whole cause & effect thing was/is already feeling pretty fucking great.

Girls Who Kick Ass: Why They Matter #1 - Buffy Summers

For reasons that should be obviously obvious, I chose to kick off this series by talking about the main character of the greatest TV show of all time.

Why does Buffy (the character) matter in-universe? Why does Buffy (the character) matter in real life? Why did Buffy (the show) matter? Why is Buffy (the show & the character) still relevant, more than ten years after the Grand Finale? Why is the Slayer always a girl?

Well, those are some great questions! I'm not sure if I'm completely up to the task of providing exhaustive answers to all of them - I'm going to art school for a reason, and that reason is: I despise reading Academic Papers, and I really despise trying to write them - but I've been giving them a lot of thought since yesterday (also: since I started watching the show when I was fourteen), and to the complete surprise of absolutely no one I've found that I do actually have quite a bit to say about "why" Buffy matters.

1. Buffy reminds us that good things take time.
You probably already knew that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a wonderfully cheesy movie in 1992, and you might have heard that it's quite far removed from Joss Whedon's original vision. (Did you know that, when Marti Noxon was hired between seasons one & two, Joss ordered her never to watch it, and she never did?)

Anyway. In 1992, Joss was able to bring everybody a creative, though forgettable, slightly special B-movie . . . called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Five years later, the same guy was able to bring people the greatest TV show of all time . . . called Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

All I'm saying is, no one could have possibly predicted the difference that five years would make.

Really casts your NaNoWriMo Writer's Block This is Not a Drill Just Leave Me Here to Die in a slightly different light, doesn't it?

2. Buffy paved the way.
For some reason, no one expected a TV show based on a disappointingly disappointing movie to do, you know, well. When the show got picked up, it was a mid-season replacement. After filming the entire first season before the pilot aired, no one who worked on the show anticipated that they would ever come back for a second season. They did, of course; by the time season two was half over, the show was basically the entire reason anybody ever even pretended to pay attention to The WB (which, eventually, gave us Gilmore Girls).

Buffy may not have been the very first TV show that revolved around a Girl Who Kicks Ass, but it was clearly something special. Without it, would we ever have gotten to know Veronica Mars? Sookie Stackhouse? Joan of Arcadia? George Lass? Lorelai & Rory Gilmore? The Charmed Ones?* Would we ever have gotten so comfortable with serious dramas that are also genuinely funny? Would we ever have learned to demand stories that really mess with our emotions?

Maybe. But, goodness, Buffy sure did make it easier.

______
*Charmed is actually one of my most hated TV shows of all time. But that's another story.

3. Buffy fights her own battles.
Does she ever whine about how much it sucks to be the Chosen One a little more often than her friends would like? Sure thing. Does she occasionally insist that, even though she's the only one who destiny picked, she can't or won't keep fighting the fight without her friends? Absolutely.

But.

Does she ever whine so much that she actually permanently quits being a hero? Not once.

And.

Does she ever NOT drop everything to do whatever she has to do to save her friends (and, more often than not, the entire world)? Never.

In short: Buffy gets stuff done.

4. Buffy never gives up.
This attitude is perhaps best summed up in the second season finale, when Angelus taunts her, "So that's everything, huh? No weapons . . . no friends . . . no hope. Take all that away, and what's left?"

And then three things happen in swift succession:

• He tries to stab her with a sword.
• She stops it with her bare hands and says, "Me."
• She kicks his ass.

'Nuff said, girl. 'Nuff said.

5. Buffy taught me everything I know about family.
There are approximately 157,000 moments that illustrate this point, but Joss said it best:

"Family are the people who treat you like family. Period."

(If you're curious, he was talking about the sixth episode of season five, which is called . . . "Family.")

6. Buffy taught me to start thinking about magic and why it's important because it's a metaphor.
Do I even need to explain this one?

7. Buffy makes her own rules.
When the Watchers Council stand in the way of her doing the right thing, she tells them to leave her alone and wait for the next Slayer to show up (which wasn't a difficult decision, but it was surely much easier since they had recently fired her father figure for trying to save her life). When the Watchers Council comes back a year and a half later for a "performance review" to decide if she deserves to know what they know about the Big Bad, she reminds them that, actually, they've come back to beg her to let them work for her.

And so on & so forth. There are more than a few examples (I'm saying that a lot, huh?), the best of which is probably this one, from the very last episode:

"So here's the part where you make a choice: What if you could have that power . . . now? In every generation, one Slayer is born . . . because a bunch of men who died thousands of years ago made up that rule. They were powerful men. This woman [Willow, Buffy's BFF & the most powerful witch in the world] is more powerful than all of them combined. So I say we change the rule. I say my power . . . should be our power. Tomorrow, Willow will use the essence of the Scythe to change our destiny. From now on, every girl in the world who might be a Slayer will be a slayer. Every girl who could have the power will have the power . . . can stand up, will stand up. Slayers, every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?"

NOTE: This series was started after I read this article: http://mattforney.com/2013/09/16/the-case-against-female-self-esteem/. Yes, I will be linking to it in every subsequent entry. We can only hope that my writing will get better as I do more of it, because this is fucking important to me.

"The Dark Should Be Afraid of Me"

You know, if when I finally finally fucking finally start classes (and, more importantly, get my own place), I think I wanna do ongoing almost-daily Pony Pic Fics. It'll be like extra, unnecessary, voluntary homework.

Because going to school & becoming the best "HELLO MY NAME IS RYAN I'M-A-PHOTOGRAPHER" anyone ever even dreamed of hearing of is absolutely this important to me.

And playing with Ponies is even more fun now than it was as a kid.

And dealing with depression is such a fucking drag and I am so sick of fighting it and I am tired of people saying they're worried about me and I am tired of other people not noticing that they should be worrying about me and I know I'm strong but haven't I been strong enough already for more than one lifetime? so, yeah, it's a fucking plan.

Sit-Down Comedy: Opinionated Facts