The Question of “How Are You These Days?”
These days, I find myself avoiding social interactions, even with the closest of friends. It’s true that I’m busier than before, working at two restaurants instead of one, but if I really wanted to, I could make the time. I think this avoidance has largely to do with my dread of the question, “How are you these days?”
I know how this may sound to passing ears, but no, I don’t think this is depression. I’ve been there before, and this feels different, I assure my readers. Or maybe it is, just a shift in how it manifests. Anywho, it is not the same as what I’ve known, and I don’t want to diagnose or label myself at the moment. What I do know is that I’ve been trying, consciously and stubbornly, to wake myself up from the illusion that pain and suffering are the best fuels for inspiration. I keep telling myself that there is more than enough beauty in the world, small and large, quiet and overwhelming, to be moved by, and that I don’t need to seek out the prickliest of thorns to feel something. I am determined not to live the struggling artist life, to let hope, love, and bravery be the beating heart of my writing instead.
And while my mind understands this to be true, after all, there are plenty of great artists who work from a place of childlike wonder and genuine joy, I can’t seem to convince my heart. I’ll be having a perfectly average week, emotionally stable and grounded in a routine, and yet when someone asks how I’ve been, my instinctive response is some variation of “uncomfortable.” (“There were difficult customers at work,” “my legs hurt,” “I don’t have enough money,” “I can’t think of anything,”* complaint after complaint, even though when I pause and ask myself whether these things are really bothering me to the degree I describe, the answer is usually no.
I am deeply anxious that peace of mind might shackle me to a reality I didn’t dream for myself. That contentment is a trap. That I must always remain a little uncomfortable so I can leave at a moment’s notice. Any kind of satisfaction feels dangerous, like the beginning of stagnation, like death. This posture toward life, being a perpetual temporary visitor in every phase, makes me homesick for a spacetime that has never existed, one that lives only in the fog of a future I once glimpsed in a dream. It also creates distance between the wonderful people who occupy my actual, present life and me.
I question this perversity often. I challenge it directly. You don’t have to declare yourself fully satisfied, I tell myself, but why undermine yourself constantly? It’s not making you feel good at all. Still, it is always the unsatisfied part of me that wins every argument.
So when people ask how I've been, and I respond, even jokingly, with “I hate myself,” I hate how it sounds like a broken record. It’s one thing to privately frame my life as a misery, but another to sit people down and make them listen to it every time we meet. And so, the thought of seeing people these days has become intimidating, tinged with regret before it even happens.