Living vs living the lie

It occurred to me that in my addictive need for attention, I am making the case against my disability. I post pictures on Facebook, in the hopes of getting likes, to feed my ego or give me some sense of belonging. I crave the positive feedback. 

I noticed quite a while back that when I post a picture, rather than just text, I get more responses. Sometimes people just read a few lines and go ahead and like the post just because of the picture. I know this is true because sometimes the text accompanying the picture is completely incongruent with the photo, and people will just go ahead and like it anyway. 

Plus, the time it takes to actually read the wall of text makes it unlikely that they'd actually read it and digested it in the short amount of time from when it was posted to the first like coming in. But people like pretty pictures and especially ones that make it appear that a person is having a good time. Ugly pictures, say of rotting animal carcasses or wounds that won't heal, not so much. 

Likewise, the stories of how you overcame something or just plain learned to appreciate something nice get big likes. Complaining about your rotten luck or the miserable state of your life might get you a sad emoji, but after a while people even get stingy with those. Anyway, enough about other people. Back to my own inconsistencies.

So, if social media posts are examined as evidence in the review and reversal disability claims then I'm apparently fucking myself by making it appear that I am having a good time. I would love to have that capacity. But what goes on in pictures or my occasional "look what I did" stories are simply me trying to push start the car. I'm manufacturing moments on film saying that this is what a good time would look like with me having it. 

Maybe if I make up enough of these little moments, I can look back and convince even myself that they are real. I know they are effective in snowing my friends. They are always telling me how happy for me they are seeing me out doing stuff, apparently living a charmed life and such. I'm sure the folks at SSD will, likewise, be glad that I've made their case for them with all of this faked "evidence" of good times being had by me, a clinically depressed person. 

To which I say, "So what." I'll be dead before too long anyway. 

Should I actually prove to be living the life of a capable, non-depressed person someday, I will be the first to shout, "Hallelujah! I'm cured!" But what the pictures and the cute vignettes don't show is the 23 hours of the day when I don't go out of the house, barely lift myself out of my chair and hope for nightfall, so I can sleep away the pain for a few hours. They don't show me clutching my gut or peering at my weird eyeball in the mirror or staring listlessly for hours at the TV screen wishing my life could be any of 8 billion people's but mine. 

OK, that last part's not true. I'm smart enough to realize that other people have it more fucked than I do. A certain percentage of them anyway. And ultimately, we are all fucked. We will all get old and infirm, die and decompose, are remembered for a while, then gradually fade into oblivion.

Alright, I have things to distract myself with today. I have breakfast and caffeine and cannabis to take me through the first part of the day, after which I will ultimately feel worse. But it's my once a week routine and it used to make me feel good, so I'm still pushing that car. I will try to play my guitar, though I know my skill level is not improving. The videos and recordings prove that (when I can even get the technology to kind of work enough to make them).

In other news, the LED came back on again after a few weeks or months of inactivity. I don't know what Sharon has in mind. I think she's trying to kick start me. I appreciate that. I haven't had a woman around to bitch at me since she's been gone and I apparently really need that in my life. 

I think she wants me to plant a garden or something. I've been resisting that because I wanted to keep my options open this summer for travel. But with the quarantine and such, I think I'll be tethered here anyway, so I may as well dig in. A garden would go a long way toward improving my outdoor to indoor, vertical to horizontal time spent ratio. 

And if I keel over outside where the buzzards can spot me, so much the better. Won't stink up the house. The downside, my cats won't be able to feast on my eyeballs, and I know they've been looking forward to that.