You think life hurts now

Wait until alcohol really gets its hooks in you

I’m telling you. Don’t go there.

Welcome to Earth, where no good deed goes unpunished.

This is going to be a super unpopular opinion, but when your life is just kind of derp--like you experience lightweight problems--you're more likely to get depressed, because meh. The good is meh, and the bad is meh. So it sucks. But when you've been through some serious shit, especially as a child, and survive, you get perspective on how good things actually are when they're good. Depressed people need something actually really bad to happen to them so they can get some perspective and stop being depressed.

unpopular because untrue

I'm willing to admit I'm wrong about this. It's just how I feel. I've never examined it, because I've never been depressed. Monstrous yes, depressed no.

When you’re abused as a child your brain develops incorrectly and it’s a lifelong affliction that makes you more prone to mental illnesses like PTSD, anxiety, depression and also malignant narcissism, sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies and all that. Almost every serial killer story starts with an insane childhood. Neglected children have smaller cerebral cortexes especially in the prefrontal region. It’s really hard to put a positive spin on child abuse.

If you are a child abuse survivor though it is your right to express the opinion that you’re glad you were abused because it made you who you are and you love who you are and wouldn’t have it any other way. People want to disallow that because they think that means you’re saying child abuse is helpful. But other people don’t get to add unsavory addendums to what the survivor is saying. I was abused. Those experiences are mine. I can frame it anyway I want. If the words don’t add up to fit a certain agenda too ****ing bad.

I'm not trying to gatekeep suffering. I just don't get why people are depressed. My honest reaction is, "Fuck you! Get off your ass! We've all got problems!"

I never say that, but that's what I feel. It's just my natural reaction. I was horribly abused (physically and sexually) as a child, but I still did well in school and made something of myself. I never once lay in bed and felt sorry for myself or wallowed in lack of desire to do anything. I just don't get it.

Shit needs to get done. Motherfucker, get up and do it!

Again, I could be going about this all wrong, but this is my experience and my feelings.

Sorry, just rambling here...you (a person, not anyone specific here) lie in bed in your depression because you have the luxury to do so. You get food. You have shelter. You wish you're dead? Bullshit. Have someone start firing a gun at you, and you'll be weeping for your life to be spared.

Oh boy. Knowing what I know about the isolation of gaijinism and how you raise your family and the personality of your wife. The more I spell it out the crueler I’ll sound and if I don’t spell it out I just sound condescending. You’re a lot like soneone who has joined a cult and really believes that’s an accomplishment. There’s a lot of pain that hasn’t been unraveled and like many victims you’re passing the debt on to your family while living in denial.

Nah. I've faced my pain. I took a decade, but I did it. You know nothing about the details of my life, fool. I faced my pain, and my wife helped me through her indefatigable, undefeatable love. But even before that, I never had a problem getting out of bed.

Quick follow up thought: I wonder if people who succeed are destined to succeed, and those who fail are destined to fail, PTSD (abuse etc) or not. Like, if you're abused, there are going to be effects, and it seems that people go one of two ways: narcissistic psychopathy (me) or depression (my friend, for example). One is the road to "success", even if it's through people, and the other is the road to "failure" because he can't get out of bed.

Again, just continuing to puzzle this out in my asshole-ish way.

*success and failure are being defined here as having money, job, stability, all that...able to take responsibilities