Depression and what it's really like

oh, i be teasing xp

srsly though i'm getting the sense that my experience of LA may not be a typical one. and i'm quite as likely to make generalizations in the opposite direction....just to feed my infatuation.

there are days when i definitely feel like i've had my fill of the place.

like when you've eaten at oki dog?

never been. pink's is bad enough.

basically out of my close friends who live in the city or one of the beach areas, the only ones who own homes here either had financial help from their families or bought homes years ago. real estate is insane. there's a woman who lives around the corner who bought a fourplex in 1997 for 430k, she lives in one and is currently able to charge 2800 in rent on the other three. the place is worth 1.3 million today. i know someone who bought a two bedroom in the hills around the same time for 270k and it's worth three times as much now. i remember looking at an enormous Mediterranean two bedroom in los feliz a decade ago for 1300 ("too rich for my blood!") and now it goes for 3k. i guess i moved here and got hitched a decade too late.

i'm happy with renting my little place in the valley (south of moorpark and east of laurel canyon so there's a certain cachet by 818 standards). rent-stabilization is your friend out here.

well i sure met some great people when i lived in l.a. especially get bent and tremendoid!

realizing that one of the reasons i suck so bad at socializing is that i put the people i like on a pedestal and interact in a way that purposely diminishes myself as a way of seeking attention. working on showing myself respect and socializing is less taxing.

For me, it's about where you are in life and what you want in a city.

I come from a very different landscape/place from Los Angeles. When everyone found out I was moving down here, just about everyone thought and told me, "But...why?". Of course, I moved here for personal reasons and obligations, not because I wanted to.

If you love the beach, nice summer weather, a variety of foods and cultures, LA is cool. If you could afford to live at or closer to the beach or somewhere like West LA, you're set. Otherwise, things just become like anywhere else, I feel, unless you don't tire of going on small vacations to Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Las Vegas. I'm a nature nut and don't mind the cold, so I'm not too crazy about those places.

But basically, one huge drawback about LA is that to live a decent life, you need to pay a good amount of money. Whereas in other cities I've been to, it's not always like that. You can have a decent quality of life for less. But again, it depends what city you're comparing it to.

Incidentally, when I went to Boston, I met an older man who had lived in LA for 15 some odd years, and he moved back to Boston because he thought it was too expensive. Now, I don't know anything about Boston, except that the southern part maybe isn't the best, and this man was from there. But he seemed to enjoy his time back in Boston and said he owned a boat and would go fishing and he taught me all about lobsters and the best size to get, etc. I also met another older man from New Hampshire whilst there, and he was very kind. These people had an honesty I've yet to encounter in Los Angeles. I don't know if my meeting them was a coincidence or if these types of people are more common there or what, but the truth is old people in LA are very different. They seem to be either miserable or enjoying life driving their Benz. That or really into New Age stuff. But unincorporated and incorporated LA is a gigantic place, and I also don't frequent places like Santa Monica a lot. Maybe there are really interesting, honest, nice old people there, so what do I know.

I really am sorry to anyone if LA is your hometown. I just haven't had the best experience here, and I mean no disrespect. Every city has its pros and cons.

xpost

there are totally great people here! it's just that they're more stubborn about not letting those influences get to them. they'd be the same person anywhere they went.

when i first spoke to my bf on the phone (we met through ok cupid), i was a bit shocked by how sincere and b.s.-free he seemed. i don't mind a little insincerity and b.s. in small doses -- a lot of good conversationalists have some amount of both -- but it's really rare to find someone THAT pure out here.

Get bent, I've totally felt that, which is why I keep my mouth shut a lot. Or I don't know what to say because of it.

Some of my colleagues, since they kind of know a bit about me already, sometimes laugh and say "I can't believe you just said that". And I say, "Oh, sorry, I thought that was the case", and they say, "Well, ya, it is, but still...". And I don't think I am being socially inept, but I guess there is a different level of sincerity here.

For what it's worth, I have met a couple very lovely people here. :)

oh this is the l.a. thread sorry.

heh.

http://i.imgur.com/fUajlE2.jpg?1http://i.imgur.com/fUajlE2.jpg?1http://i.imgur.com/fUajlE2.jpg?1

Since I auto-reflexively butt into any thread that discusses L.A...

That cliche about superficial Angelenos needs to be badly updated as we're at least a full generation cycle away from that era. That openness is indeed something new and I notice it everywhere. On the other hand, I'm predictably cynical - that accessibly carries a whiff of "do I need to know you or not?" Standard operating procedure in the Biz of course, but weird to see it in civilians.

I suppose I feel like a stranger in my home city. My old places are way past post-gentrification. I was at the Echo a couple nights ago and there were enough folks younger than me to give me a strange visiting-your-old-school uncanny valley feeling. "My City Was Gone" indeed...

Anyway confronting a very real decision - I'm not bringing in enough cash to sustain the rent on my place. Cash flow looks like a slow-motion odometer winding down - staying positive is something I have to work fucking hard at.

Also, let's not forget: the first-wave LA punk scene was a hundred times more open (re gender, race, sexual orientation) and earnest (in its sensibility) than its NY counterpart.

We're behind you, Elvis. Sending positive vibes from the East Coast.

to get away from the l.a. stuff for a while: i'm feeling pretty crappy, but it's not strictly depression. there's adhd and panic attacks, stuff i thought i had under control.

Joyce Carol Oates has been tweeting some weird thoughts on depression lately, such as these:

Joyce Carol Oates ‏@JoyceCarolOates 16h
Must be that "depression" is sold to credulous consumers who think that to be normal is to be "happy" all the time. Best cure Greek drama.
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Joyce Carol Oates ‏@JoyceCarolOates 16h
Immersion in Classic & Elizabethan literature great cure for solipsism of "depression" plus 300 pushups morning & 6-mile run evening.
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she's sort of insane on twitter

i say that with love, sort of

somebody with a Twitter account RT it back to her "Go fuck yourself" for me

eh, there was a minor kerfuffle recently over canon giles fraser saying something similar - contented old ppl don't understand that clinical depression is distinct from feeling a bit down, film at eleven.

I hate the idea that unhappiness is normal and ppl who try to take steps to relieve their suffering ate being duped, somehow. ssris are probably overprescribed but i'm not sure depression is. But my main point is that general unhappiness, even if it falls short of Depression, is still a problem ppl should address if they want to. I'm tired but i think i would relate this attitude to political conservatism ie "society is unfair. Poverty is inevitable, the strong exploit the weak, deal with it."

JCO's attitude abt ppl wanting to feel better, that is.

yup. all these coddled kids and their participation trophies are what's ruining society!

on the other hand exercise does feel pretty good

does it? or is a form of habitual masochism that has a residual benefit?

(i know it works for most people)

if you're approaching it as habitual masochism with a residual benefit than that's exactly what it's going to be, but it doesn't have to be.

yeah, i've been exercising regularly for years but I don't see how people make that jump from "beating the crap out of your body" to it somehow feeling good. long-term benefits, sure

i like exercise, it makes a big difference in my mood when i keep up with it, and it gets fun after a while. when i fall out of habit and try to get back into it, then it feels like masochism. it's no way in hell a cure-all, though.

also, i don't think there's anything wrong with a little bit of habitual masochism. i mean, it works for masochists.

but mainly i think of exercise as like giving myself the chance to a) express bottled-up feelings and b) have a good cry about them (sweat).

it's not a cure-all obviously and joyce carol oates pushups and 6 miles is whatever, just one thing of many that helps ime

i mean i've also been exercising fanatically and at my worst emotionally so

would've been more accurate if she had said "years of intensive psychotherapy and daily mental and emotional self-regulation", but i donut think she gets it. most people don't understand real depression unless they've had it, if they have had it then they wouldn't say shit like that unless they're in denial.

i read something about terry bradshaw's experience w/ depression and he was firmly in the "biological disease like diabetes" camp. i'm sure it's that way for some people, but depression has a bad stigma in our culture, so this stuff's disappointing but not surprising.

(terry bradshaw being an NFL player for non-American ILXors, using him as an example of the voice of the mainstream American man)

(Also for American ilxors fyi.)

i've leaned more and more towards the biological disease concept over time, a chronic ailment to be managed indefinitely with medication, mental and physical regulation, etc. as you mentioned

part of the reason i'm on the exercise tip at all

i think it's complex... and i don't think science understands it very well. if my depression were just treated like biology, i'd be on pills and not dealing with a lot of the root causes of it. go off the pills, root causes still there, depression's back, baby. good thing we're spending all this R&D on pills to cure us from eating too many cheeseburgers.

haha. yes, that's true, we're both a long way from the dark ages of psychiatry and yet still so far from a complete scientific understanding

i mean, not even nearly complete, there aren't consistent treatments or methods of diagnosis, even

More from JCO:

Joyce Carol Oates ‏@JoyceCarolOates 14 Aug
"Breaking Bad" also cure for depression: however miserable you think you are, Walter White & Jesse are more so. And more so. And more.

But then this -

Joyce Carol Oates ‏@JoyceCarolOates 14 Aug
There is serious clinical depression --& there is "depression" that seems sold to a consumer culture as cure for common malaise.

She has been getting some degree of backlash on Twitter for this, in terms of direct responses, though not as much as you would expect.

i find the "don't be depressed because there's always someone worse off" common bit to be particularly despicable, clearly she doesn't get it

Yeah, why is she complaining about depression sold to a consumer culture when Walter White and Jesse have so much more to complain about

didn't realize JCO was an evidence based mental health practitioner

Like most lay people, including me, JCO is not particularly good at distinguishing the nuances between sadness, melancholy, malaise, the blues, and such stuff, and depression. In ordinary life these terms are all kicked around as if they were more or less interchangeable. Which makes it confusing for her (and most of us) when we hear depression cited as a clinical diagnosis.

What's even more confusing is that so many physicians diagnose mental illness very poorly, and so many prescriptions for anti-depressants are written upon such flimsy diagnoses.

It's sad she has chosen to display her confusion so publically, while pretending it is wisdom rather than plain garden variety ignorance.

depression = suck it up, everyone's got stuff they're going through (oh, if only you knew...)

yeah i know sometimes when i'm feeling down, my wife will get a stern look and gesture to the TV and ask, "how can you act like this when pinkman's going through so much right now?"

who will tweet a link to various studies, adding 'science, bitch'