Hyperbole and a Half

by Allie Brosh

motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don’t want to do. If I lose, I’m one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I’m going to win or lose until the last second.

But trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back. A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn’t going to work.

The beginning of my depression had been nothing but feelings, so the emotional deadening that followed was a welcome relief. I had always viewed feelings as a weakness—annoying obstacles on my quest for total power over myself. And I finally didn’t have to feel them anymore. But my experiences slowly flattened and blended together until it became obvious that there’s a huge difference between not giving a fuck and not being able to give a fuck.

I had so very few feelings, and everyone else had so many, and it felt like they were having all of them in front of me at once.

I get a rush from encountering unexpectedly exceptional things. Even if I hate the thing, I still get a rush from discovering that it’s exceptionally bad. I could be injured and bleeding, but if I were bleeding a surprising amount, I would feel sort of excited about it.

Reality should follow through on what I think it is going to do. It doesn’t matter that I have no vested interest in the outcome aside from expecting it to happen. It’s the principle of the matter.

Because, deep down, I know how pointless and helpless I am, and it scares me. I am an animal trapped in a horrifying, lawless environment, and I have no idea what it’s going to do to me. It just DOES it to me.

The most basic level of maintaining my self-image is just holding myself back from acting on my impulses. I am constantly bombarded by bizarre, nonsensical urges, and if I didn’t care about my identity, I would just do all of them. It would be fucking mayhem.

Being a good person is a very important part of my identity, but being a genuinely good person is time-consuming and complicated. You don’t have to be a good person to feel like a good person, though. There’s a loophole I found where I don’t do good, helpful things, but I keep myself in a perpetual state of thinking I might.

What I am is constantly thrust into my face while I’m trying to be better than I am.

I don’t just want to do the right thing. I want to WANT to do the right thing. This might seem like a noble goal to strive for, but I don’t actually care about adhering to morality. It’s more that being aware of not wanting to do the right thing ruins my ability to enjoy doing the right thing after I’m forced into doing it through shame.

On a fundamental level, I am someone who would throw sand at children. I know this because I have had to resist doing it, and that means that it’s what I would naturally be doing if I wasn’t resisting it.

I thought the whole process was going to be sort of like getting rid of a wasp nest—a few stings, but once you remove the source of the problem, it’s gone. Unlike wasp nests, however, you cannot beat your fundamental insufficiencies to death with a fourteen-foot-long tree branch while hiding behind a ski mask and a cloud of Mace. And unlike wasps, uncomfortable truths don’t stop coming once you destroy their home.

I might not be able to be someone who never ever gets the urge to push people or throw sand at them, but I try to be that person. In the not-throwing-sand-and-not-shoving-people competition, I get the participant ribbon. And even though I know there aren’t any special requirements for earning the participant ribbon aside from the participation itself, I still feel sort of proud of it, because IT’S HARD not pushing people and not throwing sand at them.