A moment of depression led to a realization about myself that reframes my perspective on myself, both looking back and toward the future.

What was it I said? Something like, “How are you supposed to feel like you’re alive if it feels like the only good things that change in your life are by your own two hands?”

There was more to that thought. A lot of my experience with depression has included a sense that nothing stays good if I don’t keep working hard for it, and bad things can happen and take away my good work even if I do everything right. Etc, etc. That can all be worked on later/elsewhere.

That first thought has stayed with me for days.

There were years where I felt like I was one of the only real people in a world full of NPCs, for no real reason beyond how isolated I felt. I could see the world moving around me as people interacted with each other, but it felt like people only interacted with me when I initiated contact, and it felt like everyone else was going through the same script that they used with everyone else.

I imagine that in large part I felt that way because I was already depressed, but it was also a cyclical contributor.

Nothing felt real.

This felt more the case than ever when I started working at a gas station. Hundreds of people flowed in and out of the convenience store throughout the course of the day, and it often felt like not a single customer was fully aware of where they were or the fact that I was also human. I came to the conclusion that unless someone already had a reason to care about me, it was easier for them to go on autopilot just to get through their day.

That line of thought didn’t particularly help with the depression.

The more I’ve dwelled on this, the more I’ve realized that this may be a significant source of why I hate routine and full-time employment. I recently quit my first full-time job in years since the gas station, and while I had plenty of good reasons to not stay, while reflecting I also brought up that I didn’t like who I felt I was turning into while working there. Someone asked me what I meant. I had no answer yet.

But there it is. My answer is that the routine I was settling into–even though the job did have some level of ‘chaos’ and unpredictability, and even though I did like a lot of things about it–had me feeling less alive.

Our brains are not made to actively make decisions every minute of every day. They need to rest while we’re awake. And, for most of us I would imagine, there are plenty of activities we repeat enough that having to be fully present with all the decisions involved would be annoying at best. Settling into routines can make tasks mundane, and that can be a very good thing.

But I’m not ready to feel like life is mundane.

There is too much I want to understand, about myself and my life and who I want to be in relation to all the people I want to care about me. Every moment I sacrifice to routine feels like a moment I have settled for my life to remain the way it is.

Obviously I still have some little routines, such as for personal hygiene and self-care (e.g. journaling). But, overall?

I’m back to working full-time, and I have a newfound appreciation for it. A specific hourly wage is never guaranteed, but I can start and stop work whenever I want and I’ve broken down the week so that I can typically still hit my minimum goals even if the pay is spectacularly bad. Meanwhile, I take full advantage of my chaotic schedule to stop and journal or write when my reflections have landed on something that feels profound.

I have a lot more space for Becoming this way.

In the years I’ve been in this line of work, I’ve learned to be more present even as I’m running around doing other tasks. (Not fully present, mind you. There’s so much more room to grow.) This has allowed me to improve at having meaningful interactions with people in passing, which helps me to feel a whole lot more alive. I’ve never been a fan of small talk, and not for the reason a lot of my spectrum friends hate it, but because it feels like it exemplifies how dead inside everyone is. Again, I don’t want to rehearse the same scripts. I want to feel alive, and one of the most effective ways for me to feel alive is to see that you’re alive. I want to hear what you’re really thinking, even if it’s random. Even if it makes no sense. I want to see the world from a new perspective, if for no other reason, to remember that mine is not the only one.

This has also been drawing me back to my childhood.

I started reading and journaling avidly when I was in elementary school. Lately I’ve been rereading some of those journals, and that’s been helping me feel alive. I’d forgotten how I used to see the world, and those entries surprise me now.

I’ve also been remembering a lot as I’ve been reading reminiscing with my boyfriend.

Reading helped me feel alive as a kid. All this time I’ve attributed that to the fact that reading was an escape, and I’d rather feel alive in those stories than in my own head.

I’ve struggled to read as an adult, either because of the time, or because I don’t feel like I can afford to be sucked into alternate realities like I used to, or because books don’t capture my mind the way they used to at all.

It’s often that last one.

That hasn’t always made much sense to me. I’ve been trying to return to the books I loved as a young child, many of which were indeed adult-level novels, and I feel impatient with them more than anything.

Why?

Well, maybe this explains it.

Maybe it’s because these books shaped my way of thinking so much that reading them no longer makes me feel like I’m seeing something from a brand new perspective.

(Maybe in part that’s because I haven’t had the patience or time to get far enough into them. Haha.)

When the conversations I have or things I read feel like something I could have written from my own head, that bores me. I want to feel like I’m learning or seeing something new. I want to see someone else’s original thoughts.

Maybe this seems like a bit of a stretch, but I have reason to believe this is why I’m so weird.

I’ve always been quick to learn new things. I have journal entries from elementary school where I’d write after I finished an assignment while the class was still finishing up, or I’d finish reading a short story on my own and then write the entire short story in my journal as my class was still reading it together.

I imagine that has something to do with the fact that I managed to feel bored in school.

Now, I really don’t think I’m making this up. I feel like I can actually remember times like that in class where I looked around and everyone was absorbed in the same material, and I felt an itch, like I was stuck in the same cyclical schedule, the same routine. I felt like I was the only one stopping to look around.

There were moments where I thought, “What is the most unexpected thing I could do, something small and quiet enough that I won’t be noticed by the teacher or get in trouble, but different enough that if anyone else is paying attention, they’ll see?”

And I would do that thing.

And sometimes, someone would notice and laugh.

I was never the class clown or anything, but I have several memories throughout grade school of doing odd little things at my desk and feeling pleased as someone saw and snickered quietly.

In retrospect, this did two things for me. It did help me feel like I wasn’t the only person who’d succumbed to school’s monotony. It also helped me feel seen. Just a little.

Feeling acknowledged for who I am also helps me to feel alive.

And, funnily enough, all of this shows up in my writing.

My favorite lines I’ve written are often just a couple words thrown together in a quirky way, or subtle references to things. No one else has to find them amusing, but they make me snicker, and I feel like I glow with pride when other people react to them. It’s not even pride for having written prose; it’s pride for writing something that I feel like we connected on. Like, I did that. I made us both feel a little seen.

I also love subverting expectations, and not because I want to throw off the reader, but because I delight in seeing other writers subvert my own expectations and I want my reader to feel that, too. Why do I delight in that? Probably because it’s something I didn’t think of, something I couldn’t have predicted, and that originality makes me feel alive.

I think this has shaped my overall sense of humor. I sometimes laugh at things that aren’t funny–not that they’re un-funny, but they’re not things people typically laugh at–and people have questioned me about that before. I’ve tried to explain it. At one point in my depression I think I attempted to describe it as, “It’s funny to see how mortals think.” As if I’m not one. Haha. But, in a way, I felt like I had removed myself from the box that all of humanity goes in, and I was looking at how people thought and acted from the outside. I suspect that was a coping mechanism in my perceived isolation. It’s never been that I thought these very human thoughts and actions were comical; it’s that in them I see people who are very much alive, and that delights me. It brings me pure joy. And in that joy, I laugh.

To see the ways that you are just as alive as I am: that is all I’ve ever wanted.

I’ve slowly been learning to be unafraid after a lifetime of severe depression and anxiety. Every time I try looking to the future, I feel like the person I’m capable of becoming is limited to the trajectory I can predict, and I feel new enough to agency that my trajectory itself feels depressingly limited.

I’ve worked to change the algorithm of my social media feeds, and thanks to that diligence I see the world in a much more positive light. I see small forces for good that have steadily become larger, I see people becoming happier as they become more themselves, and I see communities forming that take care of and inspire each other.

The world is becoming more beautiful in spite of the darkness in it. The darkness is not winning.

But I know it feels like that to so many people, on various scales.

It still feels like most of the people I come across have succumbed to the monotony of their lives.

It feels like everyone I know limits their ideas of what’s possible for them to the trajectory they predict their lives will take.

Fortunately, I have a better idea of what to do now. My trajectory is changing.

It’s time for me to get a whole lot better at being weird.