“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” - Joan Didion
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22 May 2024.
Have you ever thought about how much pretending it takes to navigate the world? Pretending to be happy. Pretending to be okay. Pretending to know what you’re doing. Pretending that you’re living life to the fullest. Pretending that you wouldn’t rather just turn over and go back to sleep. Pretending that you and your husband didn’t just have a potentially marriage-ending year.
We just smile and pretend, smile and pretend.
Today it occurred to me that maybe depression is a kind of stripping away of pretense. That maybe being depressed means you just don’t have the energy anymore to sustain any of those pretensions. You can’t smile and put a brave face on for your husband when you didn’t even manage to take the five steps to the rubbish bin to throw your crisps wrapper away today, just let it fall to the floor by your bed. You can’t get out of bed and put on underwear and lipstick and make small talk, not just because your brain is not well, but because your brain is just plain tired — pretending is exhausting. We do it all the time, day in day out all of our lives without even thinking abt it and is it no wonder that some of us just have our engines —give out?
That’s how I feel. Like I pretend to every single person in my life that I’m okay, we’re okay, such a strong loving couple, a great life together, yes I’m happy yes I’m fulfilled —and I just can’t do it anymore. I’m tired. I want to travel to the end of time just so I can lie down for as long as I want to or need to.
It unsettles people, scares them even. Because when you don’t pretend to be happy or okay or any of those things then there’s no place for you in the world. No place for you with the people whose engines of pretend still function. They don’t know what to do with you and so they say things under their breath, make snide remarks abt how ‘fragile’ you are, how you should be grateful for your privilege, how you can’t cope with anything resembling a serious adult conversation, how you can’t cope, period. And it’s true. You can’t cope. Your brain is tired. You don’t know why other people can cope and you can’t. You don’t know why you can’t even muster the energy to feel guilty abt not being able to cope when guilt has always been the feeling that comes most easily to you, summoned to your fingertips like a dog beaten into obedience. You know you are failing at life because you are failing to cope. Because you don’t want a child. Because you just want to sit in cafes and read until you pretty much die. You know this is not how life works. You are being a terrible person and you can’t even muster the energy to pretend otherwise.
You didn’t realise that coping was the best that life was going to offer you. You thought that there were more things here than coping. You want a better deal than coping.
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21 May 2024
Can you still call it loneliness when you’re married and have a husband and parents and siblings and in-laws and friends and nephews and nieces and cousins and a home and books and a bird of paradise houseplant and more dresses than you could possibly wear and art supplies and still and still and still your heart is an island stranded at the end of time.
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