The Deep Well of Major Clinical Depression, Part Eleventy-Four

I have been severely depressed for the last two or three weeks. Two? Three? I've lost count of the days. I feel nauseated and unrelentingly fatigued. The effort it takes to pedal my bike to school is laughable. The effort it takes to shower and dress is laughable. I have been keeping to my apartment and sleeping for most of the day. Moreover, I am bored by discussions of my depression. I'd rather have remained silent and posted my entry on receptor theory. Feeling this intense desire for an outlet is depressing in and of itself.

I've been trying to will myself not to fall behind. It's the end of a semester in which I've found it difficult to efficiently manage my time and concentrate. I did not do well on two exams at the beginning of the semester. Over the last few weeks, though, I've made dramatically better grades. So I don't want to blow it now. I have two course papers to write and my share of a grant application to finish. Presently, I am trying to will myself to shower and then finish my post on receptor theory. This last kills two birds with one stone, as the post is really an attempt to understand material that will be on my Principles of Pharmacology final.

I am very, very, very tired of no one understanding my point of view. Here's my point of view: I am cumulatively angry and exhausted. I am putting a lot of energy into affording people the respect that they don't afford me. I want the catty comments about my having to study hard to earn A's or ask for help with Schild analysis to end. "Oh, I never studied after class." "Oh, I had to learn that on my own." In the smug, smug under-the-guise-of-friendliness tone. Look, you're a fucking biochemistry major. I'm a fucking English major. How many people could successfully take on a PhD program in pharmacology and neurobiology after having majored in English literature? I'm tired of not getting credit for that. I'm sick of people insulting me when I haven't insulted them; that includes some of my fellow grad students as well as the asshole outside of our department who trained me how to do something recently.

I'm tired of white feminists who don't give a damn about bigotry against black people even as they're castigating "the black community", which doesn't fucking exist, for not giving a damn about bigotry against gays and lesbians. No, wait. It's more specific than that. I'm tired of white feminists who refuse to condemn bigotry against black people with the same compassion and attentiveness with which they condemn bigotry, namely sexism, against white women. In order to get taken seriously, I must confine myself to discussions of explicit statements of bigotry against black people, but you don't have to do the same when it comes to bigotry against white women? You get to talk about "context", "tone" and "implication", but I don't? You're capable of developing a nuanced understanding of manifestations of sexism against white women, but you still think that my anger and hurt and frustration are only legitimate if they're in response to cartoonishly overt manifestations of racism against blacks? Really, this kind of isolation fills me with despair. I can't stand everyone's tacit approval of this sort of thing anymore. I don't want to feel like the only person in the blogosphere who understands that it cuts both ways: There are wrongheaded black activists who don't care about bigotry against other groups of people, but there are also wrongheaded white feminists who don't care about bigotry against other groups of people, because human beings are glorified chimpanzees, and dumbassery is an equal opportunity employer.

I'm tired of people not understanding that racism against any group of people is comprised of a set of ideas, and that ideas are culturally, not biologically, transmitted. This means that it is totally possible to be racist against yourself. Jeezus fuck, no one comprehends this. I am so tired of reading blog after blog comment, by self-identified white authors in most cases, about how "there's no way that so-and-so could be racist against black people, because he's black himself". Hahahahahahahahahahaha. Trust me. I'm an American. I did not grow up in a cultural vacuum, and I know all about being racist against oneself.

I'm tired of no one understanding that I'm fundamentally tired of everyone who does something in this line. No one understands that I tend to fixate on examples of racism against black/brown people only because most of the stereotyping I'm personally subjected to has to do with my being half-black. My need to express my anger over racism against blacks isn't some sort of hypocritical sanction of bigotry against numerous other groups of people, including gays and lesbians and whites. Nor is it a "liberal" call for the government to violate people's right to free speech. It's me giving voice to my experience. It's the product of a great deal of repressed fury over the years. It's my painful disappointment in the predominantly white skeptics' and atheists' cliques who disingenuously use examples of blacks denigrating gays and lesbians to excuse their own unexamined prejudices against and caricatures of blacks. It's my exhaustion over constantly having to encounter the defensive, reflexive, burningly self-righteous resistance to sympathizing with a perspective such as mine. I'm surrounded by an abject lack of introspection. I'm sick, sick, sick and damn tired of feeling invisible. Who wants to feel invisible? Who wants to feel worthless?

I'm tired of the idea that you have to be indifferent to an issue in order to skeptically evaluate it. By the way, why does this rule never seem to apply to skeptics who crow fervently about their opposition to "political correctness"-- whatever the hell that is-- and who eagerly accept every sensationalist claim ever made by someone styling himself as an evolutionary psychologist? Why does this rule only seem to apply to "liberal" skeptics, skeptics who are angry about sexism against women and skeptics who are angry about racism against brown people? Anyway, this idea is poppycock. It is entirely possible to fairly and skeptically evaluate an argument while simultaneously harboring intense feelings about the issue in question. There is even a neurological, not a sociological, hypothesis that the brain's ability to generate emotions is inextricable from its ability to logically evaluate the world. Moreover, you are fucking insulting me by asking me to be indifferent towards questions such as "Are blacks really dumber than whites?" By ignoring my efforts to treat all questions as worthy of investigation and support intellectual and academic freedom in favor of condemning me for so much as one quiver of my mouth, you are being hypocritical, you are being irrational, you are being breathtakingly cruel, and you are insulting me to the very bone.

This post is titled "The Deep Well of Major Clinical Depression" for a reason: I don't feel like dealing with all the readers who will inevitably be tempted to tell me that my feelings aren't legitimate because I wrote a rant instead of a dispassionate essay with citations. Yeah, I get that this is an angsty post. I sound a little like my grunge-listening teenaged self in the '90's. I am sure that there do exist people out there who understand and sympathize with my perspective. My point is that I don't trust anyone, and I feel alone most of the time.