Sad

Tonight I had my longest spell of depression/sadness in months. Perhaps it was because my day was spent mostly at a funeral. Or maybe it's because I didn't escape today(video game) like I've done most every day in December, thus I actually felt the progression of time, including the onset of night. Or maybe it's the new acne medicine that seems to cause depression, birth defects, inability to see in the dark, irritability, dry skin, and probably alien infestation. It's... powerful.

At any rate, it happened. I think you can divide the types of depression into two categories: One focuses on the result of an action, the other focuses on inaction. Depression caused by actions such as breakups, insults, and failures spur on thoughts of worthlessness and suicide. But depression caused by inaction just makes one... sad. They're the kind that I generally associate with the holidays, Friday nights, and the end of breaks from school. Basically, I look back and think, "Wasted... all squandered... There's so much I could do! So much I could see! So many people to meet, art to create, art to enjoy, adventures to be had, life to be lived! And yet, I waste it all at my computer, lost in some faraway, fictional realm where I have some warped sense of power and purpose. It's not real. It's baseless! I'm wasting my life... Look at me! 18 and what have I to show for it? I've done nothing, created nothing, influenced nothing! All my 'art' is either lacking or forgotten. Everyone I've tried to help will just revert back to their same problems. Every person I know will die or forsake me in favor of a new life with new people. And when I die, only distant family members who never called, never wrote, never cared until they finally realized they too had squandered the oppurtunity of my now ended existence. When I die, will I be celebrated? Or will I be literally swept under the carpet, my cremated ashes nothing but a trinket that must be 'revered' that no one really wants? I don't have a Heaven to look forward to. All I have is a flash in the pan, a few brief years before my uneventful demise. So short is this life we have, and it's wasted before we even start..."

Such is my thought process. And it's queer, because the depression spirals into sadness. Not self-pity, not cynicism, but stoic acceptance of an existentialist fate. I have an intense desire, at that moment, to create. I want to create something that emulates this exact moment, this exact feeling because in its tragic masochism, it is itself beautiful. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm trying to capture the feeling, save it for my depression shall subside, and I'll commit the folly of escape once again for I rationalize that that world is no more real than this one can claim to me. The difference is that I know the other is fake. I can only guess at this one. You can argue that knowledge is more important than happiness, but what if you knew our existence was a fraud? Don't you consider it a blessing that the ignorance of our reality is thrust upon us, never to be revealed until it ceases to hold us in its grasp? Those who argue that the knowledge of a situation is superior to a full appreciation for it don't know what this whole game is about. And yet... I see the hypocrisy. I see my earlier self with an intense desire to create, spurred on by a depression that I cling to because it is beauty. The art that I crave is beautiful. But one must consider the price the artist and his work's admirers pay. It's emotional masochism. You sacrifice your happiness, your joy, the goal that every single person should have in order to achieve power. And power corrupts. My favorite example is Mark Twain. All his life was spent in cynicism and creating art. His works are extolled even today as witty, moving, and a part of America's bloodline. Yet his end was consumed in nihilism, existentialism, and misery. He knew too much. He thought too much. He created too much, let the biting questions, the inner doubts we try to hide so deep inside us that their poison can never spread, out into the open and they consumed him. Is that the price one must pay for knowledge? Is his life any better than that of one wasted on fantasy and some form of insubstantial bliss? Many artists are miserable. Poe, O'Neil, every single drunkard and cynic who has written some masterpiece we all cherish all paid the price.

So I'm stuck at an impasse. As I write, I think "I've partially done it, I've partially captured the emotion I wanted. It's verbose, as usual, but if I were reading this I would say 'I want to emulate this.'" And yet, the beauty fades as it is expelled onto "paper." My mood improves, my interest flees, and I find myself... bored. The masochistic urge is past, now that my goal is accomplished. Does it take sadness to appreciate happiness? No, because there are most likely those who read this who think "Self-pitying, angsty teenage fool. Get over it." Are they incomplete? Do they lack an appreciation for joy for they know nothing to the contrary? I don't know. This ought to be my final novel, the ultimate question of which diverging path to take. A creation of art and a nurturing of suffering or an appreciation of life leaving nothing of substance behind. Action versus Inaction. Ah. How like a novel. We've come full circle. Which will it be, indeed. Two paths with the same consequence. Some people can never be happy...