My jerkbrain loves misery. It wants to kill me, and misery is a great tool to accomplish the job. Acute misery can end in self-destruction to end the pain— woo-hoo, mission accomplished for the jerkbrain. Misery that isn’t acute enough to accomplish self-destruction can still be lethal over the long haul.
Miserable states, though, consume a lot of energy.
Miserable states, though, consume a lot of energy.
They’re actually pretty hard to maintain for very long periods. And when there’s no potent external stimulus to induce those states, they wear off.
So what’s a jerkbrain to do?
Enter “melancholy.” This is a form of misery that requires no potent external stimulus to create it. In fact, it’s better without any connection to real misery-inducing conditions. Melancholy gives me all the cortisol overload of anxiety, all the dopamine depletion of alcohol withdrawal, all the oxytocin deprivation of isolation— the whole range of misery-inducing neurotransmitter activity, on a sweet, soft, low-key level that can be sustained seemingly indefinitely.
And my jerkbrain loves it. It has constructed a bullshit narrative of grandiose futility to keep the melancholy going. Feeling good is for people who have no emotional depth, no subtle understanding of the ultimate tragedy of life. Creative people get melancholy. Intellectuals get melancholy. Melancholy is a complex, dark, layered space of grandeur and pain. Melancholy is where the soul lives.
That initial stage of melancholy— how can I make you feel its delicious power? It’s the obverse of a “high,” and just as potent. A “low” that satisfies me in a perverse, masochistic, self-perpetuating wallow.
But just as the drug addict’s pleasure is short-lived, the satisfaction of melancholy doesn’t last. The state brings its twin outriders, inertia and exhaustion. If melancholy lures me into the bell jar, inertia and exhaustion slam it down on me and nail it to the ground.
And then, when it has me immobilized just where it wants me, the jerkbrain releases the devouring scavenger: Anxiety.
Once anxiety begins, it grows like a squamous cell carcinoma, and takes over anything and everything. There is nothing I can’t be anxious about in this state. By the time I get here, I am capable of convincing myself that my current and wholly temporary inability to replace my holey jeans will start a concatenating chain of disaster and tragedy that will make my life unbearable.
And why am I unable to replace the jeans? Can you understand, I wonder, how gigantic a mountain that looks like, from under the bell jar? I don’t even really know what size I wear anymore. I’d have to make the time to— go somewhere. Try something on. That would be horrible, because of course I hate my body and I hate looking at it. I’d feel just awful. Besides, I bet they don’t even make the kind I like anymore. I’d have to look at more than one shop, maybe three, maybe four, hell, I’d probably end up having to drive to Albuquerque or something. I want to weep with fatigue just thinking about it.
And so, I do nothing. And worry about doing nothing. Because if I don’t replace those jeans, I won’t have anything to wear to that casual-attire, outdoor team building retreat for work (next month!) I’d be faced with the unacceptable alternatives of wearing the wrong attire, and probably getting weird looks from people, and being so humiliated that I’d perform poorly or blow up at someone inappropriately, and then subsequently have one of those “Can I see you in my office for a few moments” talks on Monday (which is already a hellish day) or making some pitiful excuse and not attending the retreat at all, which, let’s face it, wouldn’t be at all bad since those things are horrible anyway, but still would get me labelled Not a Team Player and the next time a victim must be found, it could be me losing my job!
Somewhere inside me, too, Perfect Me™ is totally aware of just how absurd all of this is, and she’s sticking her bitchy oar in about how stupid I am to get sucked into this and how I should just knock it the hell off and what a loser I am because I can’t.
By this time, the seductive grandeur of melancholy becomes a cruel joke. But the next time it’s on offer, unless I can grab onto the Steps for dear life, and kick that temptation out the door, I’ll be crawling back into the bell jar like an alcoholic diving into the bottle.
So what’s a jerkbrain to do?
Enter “melancholy.” This is a form of misery that requires no potent external stimulus to create it. In fact, it’s better without any connection to real misery-inducing conditions. Melancholy gives me all the cortisol overload of anxiety, all the dopamine depletion of alcohol withdrawal, all the oxytocin deprivation of isolation— the whole range of misery-inducing neurotransmitter activity, on a sweet, soft, low-key level that can be sustained seemingly indefinitely.
And my jerkbrain loves it. It has constructed a bullshit narrative of grandiose futility to keep the melancholy going. Feeling good is for people who have no emotional depth, no subtle understanding of the ultimate tragedy of life. Creative people get melancholy. Intellectuals get melancholy. Melancholy is a complex, dark, layered space of grandeur and pain. Melancholy is where the soul lives.
That initial stage of melancholy— how can I make you feel its delicious power? It’s the obverse of a “high,” and just as potent. A “low” that satisfies me in a perverse, masochistic, self-perpetuating wallow.
But just as the drug addict’s pleasure is short-lived, the satisfaction of melancholy doesn’t last. The state brings its twin outriders, inertia and exhaustion. If melancholy lures me into the bell jar, inertia and exhaustion slam it down on me and nail it to the ground.
And then, when it has me immobilized just where it wants me, the jerkbrain releases the devouring scavenger: Anxiety.
Once anxiety begins, it grows like a squamous cell carcinoma, and takes over anything and everything. There is nothing I can’t be anxious about in this state. By the time I get here, I am capable of convincing myself that my current and wholly temporary inability to replace my holey jeans will start a concatenating chain of disaster and tragedy that will make my life unbearable.
And why am I unable to replace the jeans? Can you understand, I wonder, how gigantic a mountain that looks like, from under the bell jar? I don’t even really know what size I wear anymore. I’d have to make the time to— go somewhere. Try something on. That would be horrible, because of course I hate my body and I hate looking at it. I’d feel just awful. Besides, I bet they don’t even make the kind I like anymore. I’d have to look at more than one shop, maybe three, maybe four, hell, I’d probably end up having to drive to Albuquerque or something. I want to weep with fatigue just thinking about it.
And so, I do nothing. And worry about doing nothing. Because if I don’t replace those jeans, I won’t have anything to wear to that casual-attire, outdoor team building retreat for work (next month!) I’d be faced with the unacceptable alternatives of wearing the wrong attire, and probably getting weird looks from people, and being so humiliated that I’d perform poorly or blow up at someone inappropriately, and then subsequently have one of those “Can I see you in my office for a few moments” talks on Monday (which is already a hellish day) or making some pitiful excuse and not attending the retreat at all, which, let’s face it, wouldn’t be at all bad since those things are horrible anyway, but still would get me labelled Not a Team Player and the next time a victim must be found, it could be me losing my job!
Somewhere inside me, too, Perfect Me™ is totally aware of just how absurd all of this is, and she’s sticking her bitchy oar in about how stupid I am to get sucked into this and how I should just knock it the hell off and what a loser I am because I can’t.
By this time, the seductive grandeur of melancholy becomes a cruel joke. But the next time it’s on offer, unless I can grab onto the Steps for dear life, and kick that temptation out the door, I’ll be crawling back into the bell jar like an alcoholic diving into the bottle.