Feelings
Buckle up slutpuppy because this ain't no cakewalk.
I don't know why I wanted to start with that. It just felt right somehow. That's what this is about. Feelings. Rather, it is about how strongly other people seem to feel and the inceasing strength of their strong feelings. I feel like people are feeling more and more strongly about things than they used to. It is no longer enough to simply like something. Now you must love it. Likewise you can't simply dislike something. You must hate it. Failure to place yourself at either extreme camp leads to disenfranchisement.
People have spoken much about this in terms of politics but I wonder if it is not in a more broad sense. Consiter TV shows, movies, video games and the fans of those things. They either love something or hate it. It's rare you find anyone going "Yeah, that's alright, I guess." or "I don't really like it but I don't see the harm in it."-- everything is either a gift from the gods of literal shit straight from satan's fudge factory. Perhaps moderate people simply don't speak up. Surely the must still exist.
The reason I bring this up is because I feel it ties in with the haunted bathrobe of depression. Most days I am a fine, functional person. I wonder, though, if maybe... Maybe I am simply being asked to feel more than I can? Is it not possible that I only have so much net emotion to allocate and with everything pulling for me to feel about it I simply don't have enough to go around? Now, you could counter with something such as "That's what depression is!", but also it's been observed that people are becoming more emotional. So the following question emerges: would I have been depressed five years ago? Ten years ago?. Of course there is no way to know this. It just seems something interesting to think about.
What I feel is happening is I just do not have the emotional strings ready to be played like others. I am not a harp of compassion but rather a Honky-tonk tuned saloon piano. It's not that I never feel anything or that I can't be compassionate. I just can't seem to identify quite so much with feeling so extremely about something trivial. And, hell, even things which are probably nontrivial sometimes I simply am too emotionally exausted to care about. In fact, this remains a point of contention with my over-emotional father. Anything less than beaming elation he takes as a personal insult. While I still consiter him to be extreme I'm also consitering others towards that end as well... Marketing people, even. I am usually "Mostly Satisfied" on customer surveys and that's not an insult. I am generally contented and you'd think that'd be enough. Apparently it isn't, anymore.
It isn't so much that I suscpect maybe my views of my own contentment are skewed but rather I find my lack of what I consiter to be over-emotional reactions to alientate myself from people. It seems more and more people want me to react as a caricature in a children's pantomime. They expect that and don't see the lack of scincerity in the over-acting of it. They think it's normal! They think it's how people do-- and more importantly should-- act!--, don't they? Do they? I don't know.
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