Bobby D'Angelo
Yesterday I was reflecting on my friends. Throughout my life, and probably yours too, you’ll have different friend groups from different phases of life. Once you get into your older years of college, those lines start to blur. My friends from childhood are now in group chats with some of my friends from college; sometimes, I’m not even in them. But everybody wants friends who hold the same values that they do. For the hardo forex trader that makes Instagram stories of him grilling chicken every day, that value might be what he perceives as ambition, and we all see as being a huge douchebag. Those are the type of people that say surround yourself with a circle that makes you level up. You and I aren’t like them; we want friends that make us laugh. And most of the time, being funny comes from years of mental illness. For all you depressed pieces of shit like me, here are some reasons that you are so much cooler than the oblivious idiots living carefree despite being the only species aware of our looming deaths.
Substance Abuse: It’s no secret that drugs and alcohol fuel the social scene from ages 15+. There is a reason that Lip became the worst character off Shameless when he got sober. If you have depression or anxiety, you use these things everyone else uses for a bit of confidence in a social setting entirely too much. But guess what? I bet you have some pretty cool stories to go along with your life, and watching you piss your pants on Snapchat was really fucking funny. I’m not promoting your habits; I’m just saying that your completely normal and probably a good time from Thursday at 9 PM to Sunday at 4 AM.
A Fucked Up Sense Of Humor: While the kid next to you is laughing at the clip from Jimmy Fallon where the kid is crying over his Halloween candy being taken away, your watching Dave Chapelle pose as a blind-black-KKK member, “Clayton Bigsby.” Like the middle-east owns the oil industry and South America produces seventy-five percent of the world’s bananas, the good meme accounts are always run by the depraved and depressed. If it weren’t for the conjunction of chemicals casting dark clouds over adolescent American’s heads, Twitter would be nothing but clips of Luca Doncik and Ellen Degeneres. Ranging from Louis CK to Bo Burnam, EVERY GOOD comedian struggles with their mental health and puts smiles on millions of faces in the process.
You Don’t Care About Trifling Shit: C- on that test, so what? We’re all going to die anyway. Roomate came home drunk, and the girl he’s currently trying to convince to do anal sounds like a chimpanzee during sex? You have insomnia and probably weren’t going to sleep anyway. The thing about hitting rock bottom is that it can’t get much worse. Of course, things COULD get worse, but most likely, your life stock has nowhere to go but up.
Creativity: Since you probably overthink everything anyway, your head is always spinning. While this is why you struggle with social interactions, it raises an opportunity to think differently from everybody else in the world. Speaking from experience
If you struggle with mental illness, you have heard “you’re not alone,” which is kind of fucking stupid since the chemicals in your brain will make you feel alone no matter how many times you hear that. Just know that your pretty fucking cool, and if you have the courage to see someone about what’s going on in your head, that’s pretty cool too.
