Please don’t cry, it makes me uncomfortable

It’s a pretty dire state of affairs when feeling depressed comes with an expectation of... being fucking not depressed.

I recall a technicolour illustration of such an unhelpful attitude toward a specific strain of grief: the day after my father’s death, receiving a text from one of my managers asking if I was feeling better.

Ahh yes, all better now, thanks. Not sure what the devil came over me. Anyhow, see you tomorrow. Pip, pip!

Or there’s that delightful suggestion of taking some exercise. Already with about five hours of walking and two hours at the gym per week, I’m guessing the expectation is that one pulls a full-on Forrest Gump and runs until they are too frail to care about anything (which sounds an awful lot like depression to me), or until you are — quite literally — dead.

Or there’s the good ol’ “Keep On Truckin’!” platitude which belongs — along with all its other synonymous iterations — in the 70s on the bumper of a truck, the driver of which has taken it to mean an extra dose of galvanisation in the form of pharmaceuticals. What do you think we’re doing on our down days? Sitting in a cupboard chewing on our own hair, listening to The Birthday Party, growing exponentially darker and more disillusioned? I mean, we would if we could. But in the words of Ronnie Wood, we’ve got our own albums to do. We’ve generally made it to school or work and are just periodically electrocuting ourselves with a switch to distract from our thoughts.

Anyway, onto the characteristic practical element of my rants. By now, I’ve generally lost about 99% of my readership, which is usually just the one person deteriorating into virtual nothingness from the first to last paragraph, and that person is usually me.

Hugs are good for a depressed humanoid. And let them know it’s okay to be sad, and they don’t need to buck up and fuck off. It’s important to feel it through, rather than cover it up. Tell them they can listen to as much Brian Jonestown Massacre as they need. Let them know they’re safe. And tell them you love them, if you do. That’s important, because they do want to add to your life, they just need a little bit of a quick helping hand, like whatever holy force it is that picks you up when you die in Mario.