depression comix

Story/Art © 2017 Clay

373 "Past, present, or future."

Published 22 Comments

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  1. This is me. Clay, you have really captured how my life is. I have told people that for a lot of us suicide is not about wanting to, but about living being too difficult and painful. Thank you Clay for all the hard work you do. I appreciate it more than you know.

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  3. I’m 56 and have been dealing with depression in some form for over 5 decades. I’m exhausted and want nothing more than to lie down and never wake up again.

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  9. This one is pretty actual…. Mistakes in the past leads us to this shitty present, which shows that the future is not very bright. Sooner or later you end up at that last panel. at least i`m sure about this.

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    • Not even mistakes, necessarily. We’re only partly responsible for our circumstances… I mean, I didn’t build this planet, I just live here! I do the best I can swing with what I have. What I have is a Problem or three, and I can’t know everything. So I fall back on some probability/statistics facts.

      There are no sure things. You can prepare as much as humanly possible and then some and still experience failure. That’s life. (Insert Picard speech.) Perfection isn’t attainable in any form. Not even in probability. We live in a universe where shit happens. Did the dinosaurs do anything wrong that made them turn into today’s chickens? No. They adapted, and didn’t die off. And as long as there’s humans who aren’t vegetarian, there will be chickens. They’ll end their lives as nuggets, but they aren’t going hungry.

      You did the best with the data you had, with the lessons you’d learned. Yeah, sure, knowing shit sooner would be great, but that’s literally always true, so you can’t blame yourself (much) for that. You could be psychic and still be like “Dammit, 5 years ago, I should have had the grape soda, then we would be able to fend off the mutant roaches in 500 years. Curse my limited foresight! And curse my not liking grape soda!” Yanno?

      Also, on my current meds, I have a lot of days where I can imagine living a long life. Not a great life, I guess, but totally acceptable. That might be hope, yanno?

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    • I spent decades with that representation. Literally living to see the next interesting video game release before I checked out. I was like, a No Man’s Sky from death, I think. Could not imagine living more than 6 months more. Functional because it never got closer than 2 weeks.

      Meds I’m on now? I can picture living an okay, slightly mediocre life until I’m 80-90. Not going to tough it out if dementia sets in, but other than that, my big needs are: Interesting games to play… stuff to read… and people to talk to and inspire. That’s… enough? I think. I matter a bit, make the world better, and enjoy a chunk of my time in it.

      I hope you can get to where you can see something beside a void. I spent a couple years tracking down the right antidepressant. (And then some smartass tells me about this Genesight test that can maybe cut that in half… but that didn’t start to catch on ’till I was well in the thick of it… so, meh. Bit like being the last guy through a nasty road before the plows come… or a bypass gets built. Others will have it easier than I did, and that’s great. I still had it easier than *I* did in my 20s.)

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  13. I learned last week that daughter of an acquaintance lost her battle. It’s been making me think about the same since my fight is very similar to hers. Makes me wonder how close I’ve really come.

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  14. The little lines coming off the black void remind me visually of the blood vessels in the eye. Hence that void looks to me like an enormous eye staring down on the speaker

    …which seems a pretty good description of how I personally feel about my future, so that’s pretty much on point.

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