i’m working at my dream job. it is stressful but meaningful that i have some “uh-huh life is good” moments from time to time.
but every time when i sit down quietly, i can feel the pain. i feel the emptiness in my chest. i still wish i were dead.
seems like i see the good things as separate incidents while blaming all the bad things on life as a whole.
4 comments
I had a friend who coined the phrase “like being at Disneyworld with a broken arm”. That sorta says it for me. Like you, I guess I have plenty to feel good about. But it’s like there’s an overwhelming drag on my life that keeps me from enjoying anything.
I don’t think it’s just you. Happiness is usually superficial (give a kid a lollipop and he’s happy, that sort of thing). But depression and pain… I’m talking about the kind that corrodes your soul for years without even showing itself… can’t be waved away just like that. But we gotta keep trying huh?
That’s something people don’t get when you try to explain them what is happening to you regarding depression and pain. They assume that because you have circumstances that bring you happy moments everything is magically fixed or things will just be alright, but it’s something similar to treating an internal injury with an external bandage, it just doesn’t work that way.
I remember reading from someone on sp that one of the things you have to remember the most is that you are not your pain, and i think that applies to happiness too. Makes me wonder why the pain seems to stay (or turn into a constant in life) for a lot longer than happiness tho, and why we are so fast to apply the “it’s a temporary thing” to happiness and not to pain and suffering.
Good question, Mf. I have a theory that pain is a quantity, whereas happiness is simply the absence of (or obliviousness to) pain.
So it’s kinda like pain = having a red hot poker rammed through your eye, and happiness = not. You can measure the amount of pain generated by a red hot poker thru your eye. But how can you measure the amount of it NOT happening? Thus you can only measure happiness by lack of pain. So that would explain why pain is more lasting.
Are you more likely to remember the time you had a red hot poker in your eye, or remember the times when you didn’t? Lol well that was my attempt to philosophize for the day. Way too early for this.
You nailed it tho, since that’s most likely the reason. When you are depressed or in constant physical pain the happy moments are just a temporary pillow/pain killer. I was writing a huge response and then i realized… yeah, i can’t analyze stuff before my “wake up” cup of coffee, so i just stopped, lol.