No One Asked for This: Essays

Depression is the opposite of anxiety. It numbs you from your head to your toes and makes you feel like nothing matters. You don’t care about anything or anyone, including yourself. Anxiety, on the other hand, makes you feel everything. You care about everything and everyone, especially yourself. Depression has always been the only cure for my anxiety. Deep down, there’s a relief in it. It takes all of the terror I feel about everything away, and although the misery is excruciating, and I no longer value myself or my life, that state of mind is almost preferable to the constant panic and fear that will slowly kill me while I panic about being killed.

I live every day like I’m dying, but not in the fun way where you live life to the fullest; in the miserable way where you live it to the emptiest.

I was so depressed last night that I read my horoscope

It feels like the internet was built to desensitize us. Like it’s part of a bigger scheme to make even the most sensitive among us tolerant of mass destruction and televised death so we’re more naturally able to cope with the world being destroyed in front of our eyes.

I love fucked-up guys so much that literally no one I know would be surprised if I started fucking the demon from The Exorcist.

The human body is amazing; I can’t believe I can have this level of internal anguish and not have imploded yet

I know for a fact the saying “God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle” isn’t true because if it were

It’s gotten to a point where I feel like birth control pills aren’t even used to prevent birth anymore, just to prevent condoms.

Nothing can prepare you for your first puke. No one tells you what it is or that it’s going to happen uncontrollably every so often. Even if someone did try to warn you, there’s really no way to accurately describe the sensation. The closest I could come up with is that it feels like Satan entering your body to check in if you’re still alive.

Remember in high school when you thought u were depressed bc u put on Bright Eyes and cut yourself but didn’t want to do any real damage so they were just pathetic meandering red scratches you’d trace over again and again until they made a mark so you could have evidence of your own depression? Just me?

Like, sex is cool, but have you ever soaked in afternoon sunlight?

know for a fact the saying “God doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle” isn’t true because if it were, then God would not have made me a person.

The phone is an addiction you get zero pleasure from. I hate my phone like it’s a person made up of the same qualities: vapid, attention-seeking, narcissistic, codependent.

The internet exacerbates the worst instincts of the dominant

Middle school was a hell for every one of us, and luckily the internet has made it so we can feel exactly how we did then every day, forever.

Everyone has one story, if not many, of being bullied when they were younger, even the insensies. You never forget the name of the person, or their face, or the awful thing they said to you. Getting insulted is for life, like a tattoo.

Every time my mom enters my room or I hear someone mention how I’m sleeping, I add fifteen minutes to the time I’ll spend in bed before coming out. I don’t know why.

My night dreams are even more terrorizing than my daydreams, but I won’t go into them because listening to people’s real-life stories is boring enough; who wants to be subjected to someone’s imaginary night?

I spent all my time fantasizing about boys. I’d often force myself to have a crush on someone who I didn’t care about just to make class more interesting. Instead of learning long division, I’d opt to stare out the window daydreaming hundreds of different scenarios for me and my crush of the week.

Shit-talking, like improv or tennis, is most gratifying when you have someone to bounce things off of.

I know you’re not supposed to talk shit about your friends, but it is quite literally the only thing that helps you cope with the nightmare of having friends.

When I was growing up, after my mother hosted some dinner party or event and the last guest had sauntered over to their car, my parents, sister, and I would all gather in my parents’ bedroom to talk shit. It might be the only thing the four of us have in common—a keen ability to detect the most inconsequential flaws in others’ social behaviors. Anytime during the party that I observed something I knew we’d all find ridiculous, I’d store it in my head to bring up later, bursting with excitement to get it out of me and make my family laugh.

People who aren’t foreign who greet people by kissing them on the cheek cannot be trusted

How do you even cherish someone to the fullest extent? Just by thinking about how much you love them while they’re alive? All that does is make me unable to look at him without thinking about him dying. I don’t know anymore if there’s much of a difference between me picturing him dead every moment he’s alive and him actually being dead.

To compile a good going-out team, you must pick teammates based on who’s the most outgoing and who allows you to be the best version of yourself. When you’re surrounded by these types of friends, it helps you feel like you deserve to be there and that it’s okay that you’re taking up space where another human instead of you could be because your team is a good-time team. It makes a huge difference in your overall confidence when you are in a social setting where you do not, by any means, fit in.

Loving my dad so much is debilitating. Sometimes I wish he were a less great dad and person.

6. Sun and Snow Although weather conditions can sometimes be so terrible it makes me not believe in God, good weather can feel so good that it makes me believe again. Sun feels so fucking good. Like, sex is cool, but have you ever soaked in afternoon sunlight? When you haven’t been in the sun in a little while, and you see a crack of sunlight in the sidewalk and step into it, it feels like God Themself is giving you light, strength, and warmth. It’s a healing station that’s free and open eight hours a day. Also it can make you tan, a.k.a. look hot, which is absurd. Snow, on the other hand, is so beautiful that if you’re just around it, it can trick people into thinking you too have ineffable beauty. Not only is snow the most extraordinary thing to watch fall from the sky, but you can also ski and make stuff out of it? Just another added plus by God. Classic. I left out snowflakes on purpose because if I really think about them, I’ll lose my mind.