Courage, necessity, and blogorrhea
I’ve gotten a couple of plaudits in email for being forthright about depression. I’ve even been accused of courage, a trait I steadfastly continue to deny possessing. Add that to commendatory mentions of my recent blogorrhea and two of the highest hit counts I’ve ever seen yesterday and the day before, and one might predict a swelled head on my shoulders.
(I hope not. But one might.)
What am I supposed to be afraid of, I ask those who want to call me courageous? Depression is neither a crime nor a sin. As for its stigmatization—look, I have tried the hide-all-faults schtick. I truly have. I was the most perfectionistic twit of a child you can possibly imagine. Oh, yes, and a liar to boot. How else to maintain the façade?
It didn’t do me any good. In fact, it did me considerable harm. Therefore I stopped doing it. What harm I have suffered since from my honest self-presentation (I daresay I don’t know the half of it) pales in comparison to the harm I caused myself with my earnest striving to appear unblemished.
Anyone who has a problem with my depression can think whatever they like. The same with regard to my weight, my gender, and the other ways in which I am, let us say, pulchritude-challenged. It’s that simple. I refuse to hide these things; I refuse to deny them. What’s lovely about such refusal is that it enables me to avoid many of the pigs who would otherwise be stupid or nasty about them. They decide they want nothing to do with me before even intruding on my notice. I like that.
I accept the risks to my medical insurability, which is all I will say on that point.
(For additional insightful responses to Anil’s plea, try epersonae and Dave Rogers.)
It isn’t courage, not for me (I make no representation vis-a-vis Anil, Elaine, or Dave). It’s necessity. I need people around me who are there because of me, not because of some neo-Platonic ideal that bears me only a glancing resemblance.
As for blogorrhea, I think I was something of a blogger before there were blogs. I have a thick folder full of dot-matrix printing from a high-school journal. I also maintained a lengthy (as in “a typical printed-on-both-sides letter required extra postage”) snailmail correspondence with a high school buddy who moved away after our sophomore year. David and I spent two years apart, and I have another thick folder full of that correspondence.
I’m used to writing about stuff. It’s not scintillating writing about scintillating stuff; that’s not my thing. It’s not scholarly writing, either—I finally figured out I’m no good at that when I picked up my best grad school paper recently and was stunned at how poor the writing was. The data were fine and the arguments were good; the writing blew chunks. I don’t know what got into me when I wrote that.
It’s just writing about stuff. Running off at the keyboard. (B)logorrhea. Nothing new at all. People did write to each other and for each other before there were blogs. Honest.