Aimless

/ Sirius Bizinus

Image courtesy of Stockvault.

One of the symptoms of depression is a lack of interest in things once enjoyable. It’s one of the symptoms that’s been fairly consistent in my life. I’ll stop doing things I enjoy because of any number of superficial reasons. At times, I can feel my lack of interest put my whole life into a disinterested haze.

There’s no easy cure. In the past, I’d mix equal parts of blaming myself with distraction from the issues. I don’t like being reminded that I can’t function normally, although to be fair some of that is a problem of perception. All of this has roots in my unhealthy coping mechanisms I learned at an early age.

Despite feeling aimless, I want to remember that my interests existed for a reason. I found something good in them at one point, even if it isn’t something I can enjoy now. People grow and change, and I’m no exception.

Maybe it’s the change I fear the most. Moving around as a kid, I lacked the stability that a lot of kids allegedly need in their lives. As soon as I got used to a place and the people there, I’d have to move. Perhaps I’m just naturally averse to such change, as it reminds me of internalized and invisible wounds.

Regardless, change is not a bad thing. I might wander and have no purpose in the short term, but I’m not lost. That will have to be good enough for now.

3 thoughts on “Aimless”

  1. I think I have the opposite problem: I have too many interests and too little energy to pursue them.

    Regarding your lack of interest(s) … there was a time before you had each of those interests you recall. Where did those interests come from? I wonder? If you, like me, are a fairly curious person, I do not think you could run out of interests. Things I was interested in the past, I am no longer (although they do have a certain tug).

    Basically, I guess I am asking … what if your lack of interest(s) were okay? I wonder what you might find on the other side of that fight. (My impression is we identify “problems,” then we approach them at ramming speed, and if we don’t blow through them we back off and try again. If we don’t succeed soon, we back off whining.) Maybe we should just give those problems a rest and see what is on the other side which, I argue, we can find by drifting.

    I do not mean to belittle your depression, but maybe it is not the enemy people paint it to be.

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    • “My impression is we identify “problems,” then we approach them at ramming speed, and if we don’t blow through them we back off and try again. If we don’t succeed soon, we back off whining.”
      That’s a simple way of putting it, nonetheless there’s truth to it. But you have to go back one step. We look to identify problems when something doesn’t go to plan or the results were beneath expectations. The first thing the mind does is attempt to assign blame and fix what went wrong.
      From my own experience I’d say the depressive has a tendency to assign blame to the self.

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