Depression and what it's really like

And that's a very personal, contingent experience I realize. I don't know what I would think if it turned out one of them became a serial killer or genocidal tyrant...

One general position that baffled and frustrated me: But YOUR parents did so much for YOU! (But your parents change your shitty diapers, But everybody's parents put up with a lot to raise their families -- You don't have kids because they're FUN!) That kind of thinking fits with the "cheats" idea, like raising your own kids compensates one's parents for their sacrifices.

It's as if choosing not to have kids implies that one is condemning one's own parents' performance of the parental role. My parents were my model for parenthood, so if I don't want to be a parent, I must be rejecting the model of parenthood that they represented for me. It's only by stepping into their shoes that I'm able to validate the job they did and thus compensate them in this ongoing intergenerational transaction.

Along similar lines, I wonder if people read a kind of suicide wish into the decision not to have kids: by rejecting parenthood you must wish you hadn't been parented yourself.

I prefer being alive to not existing, but I can't say I'm totally positive I'm glad to have been born in the first place. Parenting aside.

Being alive is really hard and weird and I would feel guilty imposing it on a being without their prior consent.

this isn't like a categorical imperative, it's just how I feel, I think it's totally fine to not feel that way

Along similar lines, I wonder if people read a kind of suicide wish into the decision not to have kids: by rejecting parenthood you must wish you hadn't been parented yourself.

with respect for you and your right to say whatever you want, this is a pretty messed up thing to post to a thread about depression, imo
people who have made this choice hardly need a compendium of the deeply inaccurate things people are thinking about them

Point taken. Sorry for that.

once you have one, ppl will just get on you to have more because only children are so creepy

there's just no pleasing some folks

I guess there's a difference between speculating on what people are thinking and pondering motivations behind inappropriate, judgmental questioning of people who choose not to have kids? I'm interested in what is behind the judgment, but its unexaminedness means you can't just ask the judgers. Certainly a big factor is sexism and seeing women as incubators, but some of those "but what about your parents" statements were toward me or other men.

It's as if choosing not to have kids implies that one is condemning one's own parents' performance of the parental role.

This is a pretty OTM

not one's parents, at worst, the human-species-in-one's-parents (if you wanna get all schopenhauerish/ev-psychy)

respectfully disagree
i was starting to think that i didn't feel esp freakish about not reproducing but now that i know people think i am a suicidal parent-rejecter all i can think is what the hell

Sorry again. It was a half-baked and unsupported thought, also needlessly dark.

i was starting to think that i didn't feel esp freakish about not reproducing but now that i know people think i am a suicidal parent-rejecter all i can think is what the hell

There's a domain name or two in there somewhere. (I won't tho.)

i forgot to add selfish

selfishantimommy.me

xps

It's as if choosing not to have kids implies that one is condemning one's own parents' performance of the parental role.

I think this is not quite the idea people are harboring when they say, "but, your parents did so much for you!" I would place it nearer to this: in childhood you received vast gifts from your parents that you accepted unconsciously, so the only karmic redress for this previous imbalance is to have your own kids and shower them with care, as in the pay-it-forward meme. Their disapproval is rooted in believing that you are willfully stopping the chain-letter-of-self-sacrifice's steady progress into the future, or to mix metaphors, you got to eat the cookies for free but are failing to bake the next batch and give them away.

There is a tiny kernel of truth in that idea. After all, raising children is the broad road to paying forward and you are not taking it. But making that choice is being improperly framed as a moral failing. There are myriad ways to pay kindness forward other than having children, and all of them are praiseworthy.

Aimless I hope you're saying that is a framework that some people believe, and not that you think it's in fact representative of reality or anything.

I am having trouble figuring out your question, io. I did say it is improper to frame the choice of not having children as a moral failing, if that helps.

sheesh what in there was not qualified appropriately enough for you io?!

waaaay more depressed now than i was a week ago when this convo started

blame the kids

the best retort to "why don't you have kids?" is "because i've been very careful"

my life feels like it's running on empty atm. feel like a deluded failure everyone avoids. that people caring about each other is a tenuous lie that takes way too much work to keep up. it's hard.

One mid-40s woman I used to work with sometimes got pity or disdain or just inappropriate questions about her not having kids. Her response to those nosy people was perfect: "Oh...I can't have kids...." (this face and a healthy pause) "...because I hate them."

mattresslessness, it probably takes a person more effort to avoid you deliberately than people are willing to put forth

This question of kids is stupid. The world doesn't need more people. If you want kids, it's because you've decided it would be fulfilling. Other people hae nothing to do with it.

If someone comments about it they are being invasive and inappropriate and should just be ignored. Who cares why they feel the way they do

damn right

While I can understand that those sorts of judgmental people exist, those judgments are really only linked to a certain kind of person or culture. Eg no one gives a shit that my husband and I aren't having kids, and everyone I am close to who have kids is almost disturbingly enthusiastic about my choice. Even my mother in law enthusiastically supports our choice, and my parents don't give a shit either way.

The only moral requirement I know of is to be kind to yourself and to others the best you can. Everything else is just footnotes.

I'm sorry to hear you are feeling so low, mattresslessness. It sounds to me like you need to direct some kindness toward yourself rn. To begin, failing is normal. It does not make you "a failure" because that is a static description and you are not a static entity.

i was starting to think that i didn't feel esp freakish about not reproducing but now that i know people think i am a suicidal parent-rejecter all i can think is what the hell

Not "people," but SOME people will think you (or I or anybody) are a freak based on virtually anything we do or don't do. Most people don't give a shit. People you care about and who care about you think you're pretty great.

I don't even remember how any of this was related to depression. Sorry for what became for me a tangent.

I'm sorry, LL.
Some of my best & favoritest friends right now are some ppl in their 70s and 80s who have never had kids, and they are just fucking rad and have the best & most varied life stories. They are happy people and I want to be just like them. And once at that point (old) it seems like no one is giving them shit for not having kids.
And they never ask me about having kids!! We just talk about how they love to play the oboe or whatever.

matt, that feeling sucks shit :(
nb it is in all likelihood untrue

IT IS NOT TRUE

the feeling is still real and horrible and hard to wrassle

i don't even know if actual caring about other people is a self-deluding freak of genes and self-deception but i'm going to try to live like it's not and matt you're an A1 human being in as much as i'm qualified to award marks, fuck isolation and those inner voices that lie lie lie

x x x

Im doing something challenging, empowering and lifechanging.

Or at least it might be if I could do it. Spending 90% of every day in complete frustration is difficult, but the minute I let go of this rope my reserves of energy and hope will have been used up, and one day that day will come

I've gone into seclusion in the countryside to do this, but being here in silence I have to wonder if I really have the energy or interest to go back into the world anyway

For some reason, seeing Rankin-Bass on TV gives me a nasty case of holiday depression.

Maybe because of all of the family and friends I have lost over the years.

Also this is my first Christmas without my grandmother, and even though she was 98, I am still having a hard time getting through it.

why is this so hard

I don't know. Knowing seems like it would help, at least a little.

thanks crabbits and nv. you guys are great.

i don't know either. the holidays are bad imo, i'm laying some blame on that at least.

burn the world
i mean the yule log
holidays are the pits
any chance I can buy you a drink in slc on the 20th or the 30th?

getting really shit face fucked up and passing out in a snow heap sounds so romantical but is a legit bad idea
we could get maybe 30% there tho

sadfap

can only end in tears

legit 4ad album tho

My job's annual holiday party this evening. Did pretty well at it mentally, much better than last year, until about 3 hours in when I suddenly got SUPER maudlin and self pitying inside (all my coworkers 20 years younger than me dancing and just being YOUNG, something I will never be again, blah blah blah, call me Kronos.) Music (hearing it and creating it) is about the only thing that has given me any flashes of well being for months. The abysmal life circumstances of the past ~20 months have mostly abated thank god (except for the money ones) but I feel weirdly hollowed out now. Spread too thin, as bilbo put it when he was being eaten from inside by something he didn't understand.

:D

it's taken me this long to just resign myself to the fact that my mood/outlook undulates wildly and erratically and there's no way to predict it, or to change it much once a mood has set in. philosophies and systems of belief and practices and tricks can elevate the mean comfort level somewhat, but in the end I am more or less powerless over the ebb and tide of my moods. there's a certain relief in giving up trying to "fix" this condition tbh.

not sure if i'm this depressed all the time because it's winter (i guess this is an option/my therapist wants me to get a light box prescription and i wish i wasn't putting hope in it) or because my meds have been fluctuating

i've rarely been this useless and hopeless in my life all i can do is lie in bed and watch wrestling. no desire to do anything. if i didn't have wrestling i don't know what i'd do.

it's not that i wish i was dead as much as i wish i never existed. my failure to accomplish anything significant with my life and my subsequent fear of an awkward funeral where no one knows quite what to say has probably kept me alive more than anything else. i should be terrified of ever being proud of my achievements.

my therapist wants me to get a light box prescription

ooh, i need to check and see whether my insurer covers stuff like this. i really doubt it.

seriously hard to wake up lately, and oversleeping makes me a dumb zombie the rest of the day