You’re No Good If You’re Dead
A tiny tale of depression in the dystopian age.
I recently spoke with a fervent lifelong activist. We talked for roughly an hour about a wide range of topics, touching on both our backstories. I asked her, “How many hours per week would you say you spend working on this?”
She tells me (and I am paraphrasing here a bit): “All of them. I can’t not think about it. I’ve lost friends. I don’t do any other work. I think sometimes, “you know? You should really take some time to rest, or have fun … And then I turn on Netflix and wonder about how that show was made, written and cast. I try to eat something indulgent, and I think about where my food comes from and what’s in it and whose pockets I’m lining.”” I nodded.
For a long time — maybe since 2010-ish, yet definitely by the time Zimm murdered Trayvon — I found it hard to enjoy things. I was too hung up on assessing how “problematic” things are. I would scour each moment, place, thing and person for flaws. “Who funded this?” “Where are the conflicts of interest?” “What kind of person made this?” “What else happened here?” “What’s the rest of the story?” And with every one-note news story I read, I nudged into bleaker, darker territory — a cynicism that bled into fatalistic nihilism. Some of that draws roots from, undoubtedly, my own particular personal traumas…
