...okay fine, I'm depressed.

With depression, come my attempts to add levity to the situation. I know I wrote once that depression jokes aren't funny, but sometimes depression induced thinking or situations are.

Exhibit A: Yesterday at my therapist's office I spent several minutes trying to determine what grade of depression I was experiencing. I realized that I was just miserable, but not suicidal, and that I just don't know if it's situational, or if my body chemistry is just out of whack...or both. So I told my therapist that it wasn't so much that I don't see the point of living, but that I don't see the point of life. That's often a good indicator for me of whether or not I'm depressed and to what degree. I always have a little voice in the back of my head that finds life in general odd and sometimes a little pointless, but when I'm not depressed, it's a small voice, and it's generally outweighed by the fact that I don't actually care what the point IS. I am engaged in the adventure enough to just let the question slide.

When I'm depressed, the voice becomes larger and everything looks stark. If it happens in the fall or winter, when everything is dead or dying in my landscape, the point is only driven home harder and it feeds my morose thinking like a bellows. The voice starts saying things like "Jesus Christ. Why the fuck do people even bother to reproduce...we're just creating more people who will grow up and realize that life is pointless and they'll be miserable.". Or Peggy Lee invades my mental soundtrack...asking the question "Is That All There Is?":

Is that all there is?

If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing.

Let's break out the booze and have a ball, if that's all there is.

If you know the song, you know that she's not actually suggesting that the dancing or the booze will improve the situation. But you also know, that the song is hilarious. Because depressed thinking is so absurd sometimes, that it's funny shit. At the end, she muses on the possibility that people might wonder why she doesn't just end it all and she says:

Oh no...I'm not ready for that final disappointment.

Classic.

Clearly, sometimes when you're depressed you still have a sense of humor. Exhibit B: My sister telling a story yesterday about a dominatrix in her class at pastry school, who a) is not a very pleasant person and is sexually invasive even in ordinary daily situations but who also b) looks like Peggy from King of the Hill if Peggy was a man. With eyebrows fully plucked out and drawn back on in...magenta. My sister has taken to calling her: Peggy Steve. Everytime I read the name "Peggy Steve" I just about die laughing (including as I'm trying to type this). It's not because I like to make fun of sexually ambiguous people, but a cumulative effect of the whole story, and my sister's dry Peggy Lee-ish delivery.

So what have we learned here...

1) I'm genuinely depressed but

2) People named Peggy apparently have the ability to throw me into hysterics, even when I'm depressed.

3) I really hope I'm not depressed like this for much longer because I'm really tired of thinking so hard about the meaning of life.

Ima go listen to more Peggy Lee while I attempt to seem "normal" and "socially appropriate".