Depression

How are you? The question is largely innocuous. It is asked a thousand times daily, and the standard answer is “good” or “fine.” I inevitably panic when I hear this question. I do not know the answer. Sometimes I say “good” or “fine” because I know these are the right answers. Sometimes I say “okay” or “alright” because they are more accurate, but this always leads to more questions. Why just “okay?” or What’s wrong? I suppose it’s nice that people want to know, that they care. I wish they wouldn’t ask, though. I don’t know the answers to their questions, and it makes me feel worse when I have to try to find one. When I have to try to explain why I’m not “good.” The truth is, I don’t even really know what “good” means. Does it mean I’m happy? Does it mean that really good things are happening? Or does it just mean that nothing really terrible is happening? What if I pulled a Lucille Bluth and answered, “I don’t understand the question, and I won’t respond to it”? Because that’s what I really think.

Somehow, though, I know this will only serve to alienate me even more from the people around me. Make the contrasts between us even more stark. You are good or maybe just fine, maybe sometimes you’re even bad. I do not even understand the basics of human interaction, so I guess that means I’m not good or fine or even bad. I am some sort of humanoid robot doing my best to pass as normal. Trying to navigate a world of feelings and experiences I do not have and cannot understand. On the best of days, I do not pay attention to the differences and am just myself…whatever that is. On most days, I walk around encased in a clear, plexiglass suit that sits about a millimeter from my skin. No one notices it but me, at least not until they try to make a connection. Then they feel it. What they thought would feel human feels alien instead. I see the confusion on their faces, hear it in their voices. She seems so real, they seem to say. They try again and again to make contact, but I am immune. Locked inside my suit. Occasionally, one of them almost gets through, and I can feel their warmth through the thinness of what remains of my suit. But then they are gone and my suit remains. I can feel them willing me to try harder. To rip off the suit. They don’t understand. The suit is my prison, and I cannot escape. At times, it seems to dissolve for a period of time, and I can breathe, touch, and feel. But always it comes back.

Sometimes it is very thin, and I wonder if it is there at all. Then it grows thicker and more impervious, and I know it will never truly leave me. When I am alone, I pound away at it, trying to break it, to poke holes in it, to find a way out. But even when I succeed, I know it will be back. It stalks me from the shadows and mocks me when I try to be normal, to be human. It waits for just the right moment and then it pounces—encasing me, smothering me, deadening me. I feel more and more resigned to it. In my life, I will not be “good” or “fine.” I will be always fighting against my suit. I will always be viewing the world through its refracted glass, slightly removed from everyone and everything around me. I will not allow it the satisfaction of ultimate victory, but I can no longer envision a world without it. I think this is a bad sign. Am I actually doing bad?