The Marvin: A Proposed Unit for Measuring Depression

Marvin-depression-banner

This was first published on my old Literate Perversions blog in 2013. I’m reprinting it here because it’s one of the best ways that I’ve come up with to articulate my feelings about depression. There’s a whole fuckload of talk not only about depression here, but suicidal fantasies, so proceed with caution. Also, in case publishing this reads as a cry for help, I’m doing just fine right now.

I spend a lot of my time feeling depressed. Not just sad, but paralyzingly, screamingly depressed. On my bad days, I’m the kind of person who thinks that Kurt Cobain was just too fucking perky.

This is not a new thing. The last few years may kicked it into overdrive due to the turbulence of my personal life, but I’ve been here before and I’ll no doubt be here again. This has been my life since my early adolescence. It’s really hard to know how to talk about depression, partly because it’s really fucking taboo to be depressed. Show it too much, and you get the label of being self-pitying or full of “drama,” and people do a quick 180 the minute you enter the room.

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The Marvin: A Proposed Unit for Measuring Depression
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Seeing Myself in Donald Trump’s Image

This piece was originally read at the Godless Perverts Story Hour, on August 27 2016 at the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco. [Note: Includes a lot of discussion around body image, especially having to do with the nude statues of Donald Trump.]

I think it’s fair to say that I don’t usually feel much in common with Donald Trump. On the contrary, merely the feel of his name on my tongue arouses a visceral loathing and makes me want to go wash my mouth out with some kind of astringent fluid. Like a lot of people, I’ve been making myself sick with anxiety watching every little twitch and spasm of the graphs on FiveThirtyEight, not merely with the horror that something could happen to make him president, but that so many people think that he’s a legitimate candidate at all.

In short, I don’t like Donald Trump.
Continue reading “Seeing Myself in Donald Trump’s Image”

Seeing Myself in Donald Trump’s Image