What

Like. Life is so shitty and fucked up. There are good times, but never do they outweigh the suffering. It’s exhausting to even achieve the minimum needed for comfort. You get better and then more shit comes to knock you on your ass.

If life is just suffering, and to many much worse than mine, why do people decide to keep getting up and doing it?

Something cool might happen. Something interesting might happen. I need to know what is going to happen. I can't find out if I'm not here.

A whole lot of people would love for me to give up and die. They'd fucking LOVE it if I removed myself from this world. I will NOT be giving them the satisfaction. All the people who think I can't make it need to be proven WRONG.

Similarly, there are people I need to fucking outlive. I need to be here when the crabs rave.

I have creative projects I have not finished yet. I cannot simply NOT finish them. They need to be completed! Otherwise I put all that effort in for nothing and no one will ever see the cool thing I've been making! I have THINGS to DO still.

My cat needs me.

More often than you'd think, things really do get better. It can be hard to imagine. I remember being a teenager and thinking surely it will never get better. Then it did. Same thing happened in my 20s when I escaped my family and the country that hated me so much. Then again in my 30s when I figured out my gender and got diagnosed with some shit I should have been diagnosed with as a child, and finally started getting treatment. Then again in my 40s when new treatment options appeared that didn't exist before, and symptoms I'd been 100% sure would never be treatable, suddenly fucking WERE. Yeah, a lot of stuff still sucks, and certain things it feels like are getting worse, but nothing lasts forever, and the good things that happen, the things that get better and better the older and wiser you get and the more advanced medical science becomes, they genuinely do make it worth it. If I'd died as a teenager there's so much I never would have gotten to learn about myself, so much I never would have gotten to experience. Some of those experiences were amazing and I'm so grateful I got to have them. And some of those experiences have sucked pretty hard, but honestly, I'm glad I got to have those too.

Like, I’m doing Bad.

Do you want to hear about it or is this just pleasantries? Should I tell you the truth so you know what to expect or just pretend until it’s a problem?

I feel like such an attention whore if I say I’m not doing okay when I can still technically function. I feel like other people are annoyed that it downs the vibe when I’m just being honest.

I hate repeating myself, too. I’m always repeating myself.

"Well, I mean, not great. But that's normal for me." -> Person gets uncomfortable and annoyed with me for being a downer.

"Pretty bad!" (with a cheerful grin on my face) -> Person laughs awkwardly and pointedly does not ask follow-up questions, immediately changes the subject.

"Well, you know." (strained expression) -> Person may try to push me to give a more complete answer, then reacts badly when it's a negative one.

"Same as always!" -> Person asks something well-intentioned but ignorant about whether that means I'm not "better" yet. I resist the urge to explain (again) that I'm not going to get better, the best I can hope for is not getting worse too quickly, because I know that will only lead to suggestions that I try yoga/meditation/acupuncture/etc. and implications that if I would just follow their suggestion, I'd be all better in no time (it is my own fault I am permanently sick, and clearly a sign of some kind of stubborn desire to be negative to try to get attention for myself).

(Beleaguered Sigh) "I never know what to say when someone asks me that." -> Person is offended, says I should just answer honestly, resulting in them quickly coming to regret that.

"Do you really want to know, or are you just making small talk?" -> They insist that they really want to know (because it would be rude to say otherwise) and then it becomes rapidly clear that they do not in fact really want to know.

"Fine, thanks, how are you?" -> If it's someone I know well, I get accused of lying/being fake, they insist they wouldn't ask if they didn't want to know, and when I give them the honest answer they get uncomfortable and/or annoyed with me.

CONCLUSION: The only correct answer is to say everything is great, and also it needs to be true. If it's not true, then you're a liar, but if you tell the truth, you're a killjoy who's ruining everyone's day. You have to just get better and then tell everyone you're fine so they don't have to feel guilty about knowing you're not doing great. You cannot tell them you're doing bad because then you're burdening them. You can't lie because then you're being dishonest.

You just have to magically get better! Also this is your fault (for being a downer) and not theirs (for knowingly putting you in this position time and again even if you explicitly ask them not to).