feeling depressed lately

i have been feeling pretty lousy lately. and my psychologist doesn’t even want to help me unless i pay his bills and show up to his appointments and follow his suggestions. basically, i am very very dissatisfied with my life, and basically dissatisfied with everything else too. i absolutely hate the way my life has turned out so far, and do not really see things getting any better in the future. i have asperger’s syndrome, which is apparently the same thing as high-functioning autism, or maybe not the same thing, depending on who you ask. so i don’t have social skills and can’t relate to other people and life is very difficult. it is very hard to make friends and i can’t get along with my parents even though i want to, and i don’t seem to ever have any success with the opposite sex, despite being very smart and good-looking and the nicest person ever. and it is very hard to get a good job because i am awful at job interviews, even though i have a degree from cornell with a double major in math and computer science, and was valedictorian, and i am a+ certified to fix computers. so i have a job, but i do not like it, not at all, not a bit. i hate working! i only had sex once, and did not like it that much, because i was not turned on enough to have an orgasm, since the whole thing was arranged in advance and it just seemed too fake and scripted, plus i was not attracted to my partner at all. i want to actually have sex that is good, by having it with someone i am attracted to, and actually having orgasms. and i have never had a girlfriend or anything like that. other people my age (some of them at least) are married and have kids! what the hell is up with that? it seems a lot of other people actually had sex when they were teenagers! pretty much everybody, in fact! that is why i hate myself so much, and oftentimes i wish i was never born, because i feel inferior to everyone else! now yes, i am a brilliant genius, but what the hell is intelligence anyway? it is merely a tool to be used, but in and of itself, it is nothing. intelligence serves no purpose if it is never applied to anything. and my intelligence is never applied to anything, despite the fact that i am probably smarter than 99.9% of people. instead my intelligence is like a tool that is left unused, out in a shed, forgotten about, gradually rusting away. i certainly used to be smarter than i am now! but i feel like my intelligence is draining away, like my brilliance and genius-level intellect are growing weaker and weaker every day. i have always been quite a miserable person and a complete pessimist, though. for quite a long time, i have had suicidal tendencies, although i have never actually attempted suicide. i am certain that if i actually attempted suicide, i would succeed, because i am not an idiot. if i decide i am going to do something, i want it to work, no ifs, ands, or buts. i do not like any uncertainty. that’s why it is hard for me to talk to girls or ask them out, because i do not like the uncertainty, plus just the subject of girls brings up such feelings of inferiority and patheticness that i just don’t even want to think about it most of the time. i mean, i do not see why someone would want to be around me if i am so miserable and pessimistic all the time. wouldn’t i just make everyone around me miserable too? so i have to act, and pretend not to be so miserable, which is even worse. why is it worse? because i am an honest person, and anything that is the least bit deceptive is completely abhorrent to me. i do not like the idea of pretending to be something i am not. but i cannot really relate to other people, since their lives are so much different from mine. i cannot see things from somebody else’s point of view, because i am not them, i am me. the very idea of seeing things from someone else’s point of view seems completely ludicrous to me. how on earth could i possibly expect to see things the way some other person does, unless i actually am that person, and have lived their life, and know firsthand what it is like to be them? that is the only way to possibly understand another person! to actually be them! oh, but people think they can understand each other anyway, or at least they try to. i have never actually seen this succeed, at least not in terms of me understanding anyone else, or anyone else understanding me. i have never understood anyone else, nor has anyone else understood me. often when i tell other people of my problems they have glib answers like “why don’t you just do this?” or other nonsense that completely belittles my problems and makes it seem like everything is my fault and that my problems are incredibly easy to solve. nobody seems to understand that whenever they suggest a change in my behavior, this does not make me feel better, but rather, makes me feel worse. i am not going to follow anyone’s advice! i do things the way i want to do them, not how other people tell me to do them. i am a creature of habit, and whenever i deviate from doing things the way i am used to doing them, i feel very anxious and apprehensive and it is just awful and i hate it. there are probably millions of things i could do, ways i could change my behavior, that would improve my life, but do i actually do any of them? yes, just a few. but most of them? hell no! it is simply not feasible! have you ever noticed how many fat people there are, or how many people there are who smoke cigarettes, or have other problems caused by their poor behavior patterns? you probably have some poor behavior patterns yourself, ones that cause problems for you! everyone does! we are all addicted to something, if not a drug, than perhaps, some sort of behavior or emotion. and i am a person whose overriding emotion in life is fear. fear is the most common emotion for me, the one that dominates my life, because i have an anxiety disorder, and i have panic attacks on a regular basis. and my anxiety causes a lot of physical changes in how my body operates, like it gives me diarrhea and gas, and it makes my hands feel tingly, and gives me chest pains sometimes, and makes me sweat profusely even when i am cold, and shiver when i am hot, oftentimes sweating and shivering at the same time. there is something called the “fight or flight response” that is activated in me every time i get panicky, and this happens to me all the time, so much so that it has become routine and i can deal with it perfectly fine since it has happened a million times before. but lately i have been eating a lot more food and gaining weight quite rapidly. i am now 10 pounds away from falling into the dreaded category of “obese” rather than my current categorization as “overweight”. and that was actually what the doctor said, like, a week ago, and i think i am even closer to being obese now. i should probably get more exercise, but i hate doing exercise. i hate the way exercise makes me feel. i hate how it exhausts me, the way it makes my muscles feel, the way it makes me breathe heavily, the way it makes my heart pound. so, i suppose light exercise is not as bad as vigorous exercise, which is the type i really hate. but, i am somewhat masochistic, and lots of times when i exercise, i deliberately do it vigorously, just to make myself miserable, because i know how much i hate it. and then after that i avoid exercising for a long time. i don’t know... i think i am just insane. and evil too. i am very evil. i mean, i just don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but myself. you can all go to hell for all i care. i only care about myself. i have enough problems of my own to deal with, why should i bother myself with caring about anybody else’s problems? that would only add even more to the problems that are burdening me. there is so much death and violence and destruction in this world, so many horrible things going on, that i simply cannot bother to care too much about it anymore, because if i did care about it, if i did feel badly for all of the people who have bad things happen to them, the pain and suffering would just be so overwhelming that it would be impossible for me to go on living for another nanosecond. now i realize that i am probably economically better off than most people in the world, and probably am much luckier, especially with my intelligence and good education and all. but really... who the fuck cares? my life sucks, and most other people also have lives that suck, apparently. most of them would do a much better job at living my life than i do, if they were gifted with the same talents as me, and given the same advantages (ignoring for the moment all of my disadvantages). but if you gave someone else my disadvantages, and none of my advantages... well they would probably be dead by now. at least i am still alive, and there is still (theoretically) some chance that my life will improve. actually, it is pretty much guaranteed that my life will improve, if you are from the school of thought that says that once you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere to go but up. being a pessimist, i tend to think that things always get worse, and then just when you think they are so bad that they could not possibly get any worse, they actually do get worse, in fact, much, much worse. maybe i am just completely batshit insane. i probably am. but for some reason, society has not seen fit to lock me up in an institution for the criminally insane. perhaps they should reconsider. who knows? i mean, when i watch movies, i tend to like the villains better than the heroes, even though the villains are such 2-dimensional evil personalities, and there never seems to be any logical explanation for their thirst for destruction. for some reason the villains in the movies just seem to be a hell of a lot cooler than the heroes, and then when the heroes finally defeat them in the end, i am kind of bummed out, because i was rooting for the evil side to win. i dunno. maybe i am just evil or something. i hope so. because evil people kick ass. lots of times the heroes have problems, just like i have problems, and it does not seem like they will be able to triumph over adversity, because the villains are so much more powerful. how lame! the heroes should just give up and let the evil villains triumph! that would be better! a hell of a lot more like reality, anyway... in the real world, the evil villains always triumph. i mean, lately, world leaders like george w. bush, mahmoud ahmadenijad, and hugo chavez have been in a sort of pissing match to see who is the evillest, and each of them is trying to out-evil the others. bush violates the laws and constitution and then wants congress to pass a new law legitimizing torture even though he justified war with iraq because saddam hussein had torture chambers and killed people. mahmoud ahmadenijad lies and says he only wants nuclear power plants, not nuclear weapons, and wants to wipe israel off the map, and says the holocaust never happened, all while aggressively pushing ahead with his nuclear weapons campaign, and conducting a p.r. offensive by having every major news outlet in the entire world get an interview with him. and hugo chavez goes around and buddies up with all the evillest dictators in the world, becoming best friends with them, to form an evil alliance against the united states, all because he read in some book by noam chomsky that the united states is an evil imperialist power, but hugo chavez is so dumb, he thinks noam chomsky is dead, and then when they interview noam chomsky, he says he likes hugo chavez and would like to meet him. craziness! but i just think the eviller you get, the more you kick ass. because as a pessimist, i see things getting worse all the time, and you might as well be in the driver’s seat, and be the one actively making things worse, rather than being the victim of someone else making things worse for you. i mean, the idea of things getting better, that is just laughable! ha ha! we thought things were better after the soviet union fell! yeah right! look what a mess things are now! at least back then, there were just 2 superpowers, and things were somewhat under control, since everyone either sided with one of them or with the other. now, everything is just f.u.b.a.r., or fucked up beyond all recognition. at least the prime minister of hungary gets it! he admitted to being a liar and not having any positive accomplishments, in all the years his party has been in power! now that is the kind of person we need in public office, the kind who screws things up completely, and then actually admits to it! that is the kind of politician to support! if only president bush would admit to being a shit-for-brains and completely screwing up everything in the entire world, then i could vote to re-elect him to a third term in 2008! at least i would be voting for someone honest for a change! why do we even bother punishing criminals and sending them to jail? we ought to just give them medals and awards, lavishing praise upon the most successful criminals! oh wait, that is what we do right now! sorry about the mix-up! anyway, life sucks and then you die! so does that make death good? no! death is even worse! death is so mind-bogglingly bad, horrible, awful, and terrible, it somehow makes life look good in comparison! the only people who enjoy death are already dead, and good riddance! they were idiots, because death is bad! smart people like good things and don’t like bad things! but i am a complete pessimist, so my view of reality is decidedly unamerican, as americans are an optimistic people! i do not even belong in the united states, what with my pessimism and all! why, pessimists like me ought to be locked up in guantanamo bay for treason! everyone must be happy and smiling, or you will be executed! that reminds me of borat, the #2 television reporter in kazakhstan! he has made a movie, and if it does not do well and make a profit, kazakhstan will execute him! that is a fact; i saw it in the movie trailer! i like borat very much, because i have a thing for former soviet republics. all the corruption, oppression, crime, poverty, and nuclear weapons being sold to the highest bidder... it is the way the entire world ought to be! humanity is destroying itself, and we are destroying this planet... so why not do it as quickly and efficiently as possible, if we are going down that road? get the job done, get it over with, so our planet can move on, and some hyperintelligent alien race can take over and clean up the mess our stupid species leaves behind! ha ha! as if aliens would even bother caring about a stupid planet like this! most aliens probably wouldn’t even come here on a bet! they probably just send naughty aliens here to punish them, using our planet as a prison, much like the british did with australia! that is probably where the human race comes from! our ancestors were the scum of all the other planets, the lowest of the low, and the aliens wanted to be rid of them, so they sent our ancestors here to earth! that also explains all the other species like animals, that are too dumb to even think! of course i am simply joking; i do not believe any of this. this lengthy diatribe is getting rather ridiculous at this point. anyway, i have been feeling depressed lately, but not all of the time. sometimes i am in fact happy, and enjoying things. my mood swings are quite odd. but it seems when i am in a bad mood, i am in a really, really, really, really bad mood. and then, a few hours later, for no apparent reason, i am feeling perfectly fine. it is so utterly bizarre. sometimes it just seems like all of my problems disappear and everything is fine. i suppose i just like to ignore reality, and avoid having to deal with things. that is my main strategy in coping with problems, actually. i just think that if i ignore something long enough, and avoid dealing with it, maybe it will go away and the problem will just somehow magically solve itself. when it comes to getting a girlfriend or getting laid, this avoidance tactic does not seem to work. i don’t exactly understand why. don’t girls all have psychic powers? why can’t they simply read my mind, and then out of the goodness of their hearts, proposition me for sex? of course i am being facetious, and simply spouting ridiculous nonsense. but at some level, that nonsense is the type of crap i have to actually believe, at a subconscious level, in order to justify my inaction, to justify how i avoid dealing with things. i have to not only avoid dealing with reality, but actually believe in things that are patently false, just in order to avoid complete despair. everything i do, i have to justify to myself, and somehow, even when i do something that is totally wrong or retarded, i find a way to justify that i acted the way i should have. and sometimes, the only way to justify things is to come up with ridiculous supernatural explanations for things, although, to be honest, i am fully aware of the fact that all supernatural mumbo-jumbo is entirely false, and this physical universe of matter and energy is all that exists, and the laws of the universe are unchanging and eternal. but reality is boring and dehumanizing and depressing, so why do we need to acknowledge it, anyway? what we believe is entirely irrelevant, as we are mortal beings that, according to the laws of the universe, are guaranteed to be completely destroyed at some point in the future. why must we have beliefs which are correct or correspond to reality, if these beliefs do not make us feel good? why not just believe in patently false supernatural crap, then? at some level, i think there is a case to be made for believing in things that are obviously false, but on another level, i think it does more harm than good, since it ruins our abilities to logically reason about things. logical reasoning is simply a tool to start with some basic assumptions or known facts, and use these to come to some conclusions, to actually figure some stuff out. but the conclusions are only valid if the assumptions are valid and if every step of the logical reasoning sequence is valid. in other words, the conclusions are hardly ever valid, because almost everyone messes up at least somewhere along the way; it is human nature to screw up, and our minds are hardwired to do that. so why even bother thinking, or wondering about anything, and why not just go out there and do things? why not just live? take action? avoid use of your mind’s capacity for reflective thought? that is how most people operate, but i am different. different on an almost fundamental level. my mind does not have an on/off switch; it is always on, always thinking about the great questions of philosophy, always thinking about my personal problems, always thinking about hot girls, always thinking about video games i want to play, always monitoring the status of my bodily processes and whether i am hungry, thirsty, need to go to the bathroom, need to sleep, or am having a panic attack and need to calm down. perhaps i worry too much about problems, and this may be the cause of anxiety. maybe i think too much. i suppose it helps that i am vocalizing my thoughts on this blog, because perhaps if someone reads them, someone might actually have something helpful and productive to say, something meaningful and profound, yet very applicable and useful. but i doubt anyone who reads this is that good at solving problems. strangely enough, i am excellent at solving problems, if they are the right type of problems, and if i focus on them one at a time and devote my full attention to only one of them at a time. but all too often i fall into the trap of worrying about a bunch of different problems at once, or worrying about a problem that i could not possibly fix at the time i am worrying about it (like certain problems can only be solved if you are at home, or in your car, or during certain times of the day, or in the presence of certain other people, etc.). and i lack the organizational skills to keep track of everything; i basically make a mess of everything and have no clue what is going on because i forget about things that are important. this is probably because i try to solve problems by avoiding them and pretending they do not exist. according to logic, if the assumptions i start with are the basic laws of the universe, it is a pretty obvious conclusion that problems do not magically solve themselves if you avoid doing anything about them. i do not know exactly how one would conclusively prove that as a theorem, but it is such an obvious truth that there is really no reason to prove it anyway. logic is simply a distraction, because it takes too long. the same is true of mathematics, which is another tool that is quite useful, but in and of itself, serves no purpose, except when it is applied to solve a problem that is within its realm. as a mathematician, i do actually enjoy mathematics to a certain extent, but that is precisely because it is a means of avoiding having to deal with reality, and instead i can think about abstract concepts that consume a sufficient amount of brain activity to distract me from my problems and make me feel better. but yeah, i am happy sometimes, actually. i am not always miserable. actually, i used to think i was like a robot and did not even believe i had emotions like other people. that was just what i thought when i was a little kid, back in elementary school or something. anyway i am going to get a doggy soon, probably. i went to the dog pound earlier this week and looked at the dogs, with my mom along too. and there was only one dog that had been there long enough to be available for adoption. the others were still waiting for owners to pick them up. anyway, cats are evil. they are the spawn of satan. i still have a cat scratch on my right hand from a few weeks ago and it has not healed yet. cats always seem to have problems with me, because i bother them too much. i keep coming up to them and trying to pet them even though they don’t want me around. basically, i do not care what they think, and want to pet them since they are cute-looking fuzzy animals, and eventually they get so pissed they attack me and i get scratched up. so i am kind of wary about hot girls, because they are probably even more vicious than cats, if you bug them too much. maybe if someone else actually liked me... but i do not see why anyone ever would like me. i mean, i don’t even like myself, so why would anyone else? but i do like small furry animals. it is odd that the squirrels and bunny rabbits are all so afraid of me, just like kittie cats. apparently small furry animals all suffer from anxiety disorders, and they get a fight-or-flight response when around humans that are much larger than them. maybe they need that to survive. i don’t know. but it would be nice if there were more small furry animals that liked to be around people and were not afraid of us, ones that could be kept as pets. there are all sorts of animals where i live. there are even groundhogs and deer that come into my backyard all the time. and so many types of birds and insects! i hate insects and spiders. i mass-murder insects and spiders all the time. just outside the entrance to where i work, i massacred 5 spiders about a week ago, and dismantled their elaborate spiderweb infrastructure. the spiders have not returned since then. but there are bats nearby. there are bats in the parking garage where i park my car when i go to work. i don’t like them; they are very creepy and annoying. and a lot of spiders on the ceiling, too. except i can’t reach the ceiling since it is like 20 feet above me. the bats are kind of small. they are hard to tell apart from large moths, especially for someone like me who has bad distance perception. it is hard for me to tell how far away something is, visually. i am third dimensionally disabled. so i was always bad at sports because of my dimensional disability; the 2-dimensional images from my 2 eyes would both combine into a single 2-dimensional image, and somehow the extra 3rd dimension would get lost in the process. i am getting better at this, luckily, especially since i started wearing glasses at age 18. i had been avoiding them earlier because i wanted to avoid taking on any of the stereotyped aspects of a nerd, such as having glasses. in high school, i was obsessed with trying not to fit into the role of a nerd, since i seemed to have all the characteristics of one. that might have been part of why i had no friends, since i did not want to be associated with anyone else who was unpopular, and tried to surround myself with people who were much much more popular than me, who would order me around and make me their slave. i had to help everyone who was popular cheat on tests and do their homework for them, and got nothing at all in return. i guess that was kind of dumb of me. and they got laid all the time and i didn’t. i sure hated high school. i even viewed being valedictorian negatively, i thought it was the ultimate dishonor, the biggest insult, that i was the biggest bookworm geek nerd dweeb egghead misfit loser, so much so that i wasted all my time doing my work and studying hard and getting the highest grades in all my classes. i tend to look at everything negatively. but i like dogs. they are stupid and do whatever you tell them, and can’t talk, and you can do pretty much anything to them and they won’t care, and will still love you unconditionally. in a way i wish people were a lot more like dogs. i know some dogs are bad-tempered and actually do care if you do certain things, like wake them up or mess with them when they are eating. but the dog i had, she was hardly ever upset by anything. that is the kind of dog i want, one that is never upset by anything, one that simply accepts things whatever happens, and who is friendly to everyone, even suspicious strangers. anyway, i was pleased to hear about the military coup in thailand, since i do not believe in democracy anymore. it would be nice to have a military coup in the united states of america. i am sure that the generals would do a better job running the country than our current civilian leadership. who else agrees with me? everyone? good! because anyone who does not will be executed for treason, once the generals take over in the military coup. and all the retired generals who have jobs as consultants for cnn and other news outlets? they would get their jobs back as generals, and become part of the military dictatorship. and the commander-in-chief? i think general wesley clark would do a good job as our military dictator. i mean, michael moore supported him in the 2004 democratic primaries, so he must be good. which general do you think would do the best job as our military dictator? think about it. then once we find out which general has the most public support, we can help organize mass public protests in favor of a military coup, and ending our stupid democracy once and for all. once we have a military dictatorship, our country will be unified, and all of the partisan bickering between democrats and republicans will become a thing of the past, once all political activity is outlawed and the entire nation is put under martian law. then when the martians come from outer space, our nation will graciously accept their leadership, and there will be a seamless transition, with martian law already in place. our alien space masters will prove adept at managing our affairs on this pathetic excuse for a planet we call earth, issuing command directives from martian headquarters, in the inner core of mars. hmm. maybe i should get a haircut or something. i want to go play video games or something. i wonder what is on tv. if i were a normal person, i would be out clubbing in an hour or two, and hook up with a hot girl and get laid. i wonder why i do not behave that way. why am i so reserved and cautious in my personal life? maybe because i am a big fatty fat fatass. i need to lose some weight, before i weigh so much that every building i enter suffers permanent structural damage. if i get too fat, every step i take would cause an earthquake, and when i spoke, hurricanes would come out of my mouth. whenever i took a crap, soon after, new islands would be discovered. if i sneezed, any birds flying in front of me would be launched into outer space. i would exhale so much carbon dioxide, my lungs would be responsible for 73% of global warming. anyway, talk to y’all later. keep it real. peace.