Being Well Adjusted

The thing is, my whole family’s depressed, and has always been depressed, for as long as I can remember. It’s just that I can force myself to function more or less to the standards of the outside world, where they don’t. I can drag myself to work, I can take a shower if it’s a weekday (and I have to go to work). I can slap on a smile and strike up a conversation. Sure, I can’t do anything else–can’t buy food for myself, eat, cut my hair, clean, read, pursue a hobby, buy a phone, or do anything other than shut down and become near-catatonic when I shut the door to my apartment in the evening. It’s not just the misery, but how the misery puts a fog over my brain so I can’t properly think about anything in the way I know I’m supposed to be able to. It’s how I’m more and more frequently gripped by a heart-stopping panic that makes me want to run for my life, stop sleeping, die. And yet, even through all of this, my family and coworkers think I’m just fine and well adjusted–of course they do, because all society at large really cares for is how smooth a cog you can be in the fucking capitalism machine. I can do my job. Only my job. That’s all that matters, huh? I can’t possibly be doing at all bad like my older brother still flunking through his classes in college, or my unemployed/barely employed parents. I have a paycheck!