My Invisible Problem

So I went out with my ex last night. And at the bar we met a guy who actually had some interesting things to say, imagine that. But there was one statement he made that was simple, yet so profound at the same time, and it was this:

"It all comes down to this: all women are crazy, and all men are stupid."

If you think about it, it really does explain a lot of things, especially when it comes to relationships. Men think women are conniving, and it's because we're crazy and they're easy to fool. Women think men are assholes, it's because they're stupid and therefore bad at hiding their selfishness.

Now don't get me wrong, there are many different levels of craziness and stupidity, but when it comes down to it it makes sense in almost every situation.

There's a guy at work that drives me crazy. And not in the good way. All he does is talk about how stupid other human beings are, and I know I'm one of them. Thing is, I'm not stupid. Far from it. He just has a compulsive need for everyone to do things exactly how he does. I just have a different way of doing the same things. So every time he's around, he rudely corrects and picks apart my job at the meaningless work it is that we do. And I have no choice but to listen to his egotistical, bigoted, self-fulfilling commentary in the break room. The best part? He pretends he still doesn't know who I am after working there for 4 months.

I hate feeling invisible, and lately it's what I've felt. I had a period in college where I felt so completely insignificant that I fell into a pretty bad depression. Thing about depression is, it's like a gang: when you're in, it's really hard to get out. Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love) described her depression as a two goons that hung around and haunted her daily life, their names: Depression and Loneliness. You just have to stand up and yell really loudly: I DO NOT BELIEVE IN YOU!!! But of course, it's not as simple as just saying it. You've got to believe it too.

Gilbert thinks a lot like I do. I wish I wasn't prone to depression, but I am. This is the way she feels, and one passage I found particularly interesting was her looking into all the possible reasons for her depression:

{What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad's fault?) Was it just temporal, a "bad time" in my life? Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, ahs run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological? Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millenia of my species' attempting to surive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles from liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical inbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?}

Unfortunately for me, Depression and Loneliness have come to hang around lately, because of this "invisible problem", and it's screwing with my relationships. It's hard to be around someone who's depressed, so I'm trying really hard to get rid of the two goons. I learned that the hard way when I lost my best friend in the world because of it. On the other hand, it wasn't completely my fault, she was more selfish than most, and she also changed.

The biggest relationship it is screwing with right now is the one with my ex, and I feel horrible about it. I find myself going back and forth, trying to fall in love with him the way I was before his big secret came out, but also feeling that having a boyfriend makes me more invisible because of the lack of social life. Don't get me wrong, I still really care about him. But last night he told me it was one or the other, and I don't want anything but the middle. Go figure.