the difference

Stressed out? Smoke a cigarette. Drink a glass of wine. Take a hot bath. Run ten miles. Depressed again? Get up off your ass and do something. These are common complaints and their common answers. It's become so natural to talk about these attributes of our modern day personalities, that we don't even see them as anything more than casual conversation pieces. The only time we ever take someone's depression or stress levels seriously is if they take a gun and run into a restaurant and kill everyone or if they drown their children in a tub. Anything less than that, it's not that bad. It's manageable stress and depression and therefore, not worth noting. You have to make a statement to make people beleive that you are truly stressed or depressed. Isn't that sad?

We are so used to the conversation it doesn't mean anything when we hear it or participate in it.
"Hey, (you) you okay?"
"I'm fine"
"You sure, you don't look that great"
"I'm just stressed out today."
"Really?"
"Yeah, I'm spent"
"We should get a drink after work."
"No, I have to get this done and I need money pretty bad"
"You need to relax, you are working to hard - you need some you time"
"I can't, there is no such thing as me time when you have kids and two car payment"

And so on, and so on.

No one cares about stress and depression anymore. Their trivial mental disorders that everyone has and no one cares to deal with. It's boring to mention it, it's boring to hear about it, and it's annoying to watch. The fact that this is true tells me that we are gearing up for something pretty big and bad to come our way.

Stress and depression are really nothing new and nothing special. We all have it. We all share it and some of us are just a bit more overwhelmed with it from one moment to the next. Some people are good at "managing" it and some are down right spooky when it comes to their handling of it. Trying to share your feelings about your stress and depression story is difficult when you know that people around you are looking to share their stress and depression story with someone as well. Someone has to be the most stressed out and the most depressed and so we go head to head to fight it out for most overwhelmed soul of the moment. The winner gets nothing. However, the loser feels better about themselves for not being as bad off as the winner. So really, who won here?

Beyond all this stress and depression is the state of mind that most people never get to see because their lives are never complete enough for them to achieve the level necessary to accomodate it. As long as you have bills, an ounce of body fat, children, relationship problems, mommy or daddy issues, sexual issues or career issues, you will never know the worst type of the socially accepted mental disorders. For all of you stressed out, depression loving people out there, listen up... you ain't seen shit. My friends, let me introduce to you, the Perfects. Those among us who seem to walk between the raindrops and smell great even after stepping in a vat of dog shit. Those people that always have money, new clothes, great sex, clear skin, great doctor visits and a smooth running car. Those people that seem to just be blessed by the gods. The people that the stressed and the depressed gauge their stress and depression levels against. The people that most people wish would just die, if for no other reason that to level the playing field.

But all that perfection is an illusion. Perfection comes at a heavy price that the stressed and the depressed do not know. If depression afflicts the lowly, and stress afflicts those on the middle ground, then Paranoia afflicts only those with the highest levels of living. You can define life this way; You don't have anything and you want something, you barely have it and you're trying to hang on to it, or you have it and you don't want to lose it. The latter is the mental illness of the perfect. The state of mind that at any moment this perfection can be taken away or could be scarred in some way, and then they would become just like the people they see around them everyday; Sad, ugly, poor, hopeless individuals that have never known the glory of the world the way that they have. It must be unbearable.

If my analysis is hard to stomach, I ask you these simple questions...

What do the perfect people seem to do more of that the others do not?
What are the perfect people willing to sacrifice to maintain perfection?
How hard will a perfect person fight to keep things the way they are?

These same questions do not apply for the stressed or the depressed. The answer for all of these questions as it applies for the depressed person is pretty obvious. The stressed people don't have time to answer these questions.

At one time or another, we have all seen each of these lifestyles. We have all known perfection, even if it was a million years ago when we were children. Of course, we never knew that things would change, so the paranoia wasn't there. Somewhere along the line, someone had to teach us that we needed these three mental disorders to be human. Somewhere along the line, we found our own little way to living with whatever form of mental illness suited us best. I think it's time we invent a new form of mental illness. Let's call it, "Ego-apathetic-dependency" It's where you don't care what is going to happen and you don't care what is happening. As long as you are eating, sleeping, and staying warm. Life is working for you. It may not have a mortgage and it may not have cable, but it's working for you.