Seriously

I have a super hard time with being serious. When I was a child and throughout my life, I would get in trouble for laughing at inappropriate times, especially when people were trying to be serious.

It’s kind of a strange paradox that I struggle with how hard life is, but I also don’t understand why people get upset or frustrated with things.

I think the thing that bothers me most about depression is how serious it is. I’m just not a serious person normally. I don’t stress about tests or making things perfect or trying to be someone I’m not. I don’t generally stress about how I look or what people will think of me or what to say next in a conversation. I just take things one step at a time and analyze the situation as it comes up.

Even with my struggles with autism and talking to people, I don’t usually stress out about it unless I’m depressed. I’ve had people tell me I’m inspiring for talking to random people despite my challenges. To me though, it’s not inspiring. It’s just easy. Life is easy. Not because life isn’t hard, but because it doesn’t matter if you mess up. I don’t take life seriously because messing up isn’t the end result; it’s just a step along the way. If I fail 100 times, it doesn’t matter because it’s not the end. I only really fail if I stop trying.

Which makes depression so hard for me to understand, because I feel like a failure before I even begin. For someone who never worries about failing, starting out as a failure is overwhelming. I mean, it would be overwhelming for anyone; it just seems so abstract. When I’m depressed I don’t feel like myself. I feel asleep, far away, trapped inside my mind.

Maybe that’s why I have depression, because it’s the only way I could understand people’s struggles. It’s the only thing that I take seriously. I can understand seriousness and be understanding because I know the dark. The darkness is serious and it’s all around; so I can understand fear and hate and stress and sadness and hopelessness. Life is serious. It’s hard and crazy. But because of that, I feel like it’s so important to not take life seriously. If we acknowledge how difficult life is, we don’t have time to realize how beautiful it is.

I know we all have struggles. I know I’m nothing close to perfect. But the only thing I want to be serious about is not taking life so seriously that I forget to just live.