textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-0372.txt

 '##::::'##:::'#####:::'########: VIVA LA REVOLUCION! CERDO DEL CAPITALISTA!!
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  ##:::: ##:'##:::: ##: ##::::::: THE HELOTS OF ECSTASY PRESS RELEASE #372 !!
  #########: ##:::: ##: ######::: ZIEGO VUANTAR SHALL BE MUCH VICTORIOUS!  !!
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  ##:::: ##:. ##:: ##:: ##::::::: "Internet Depression"                    !!
  ##:::: ##::. #####::: ########: by -> LilNilHil                          !!
 ..:::::..::::.....::::........:: 12/22/98                                 !!
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        My sister is cooler than me.  She *is*, damn it!  She should
 write for h0e.  She knows the way, not me.  Here, look at a letter she
 wrote me.

 !!=====!!
 
        "I was looking at your writing.  You really are a weird little
 freak, Dan.  When did you do that journal thing, anyway?  Is that all
 from like a year ago?  What was that story about the girl named Sarah?
 I figured that was about the Sarah in Virginia, you don't still talk to
 her do you?  I was wondering about where that story came from.  You need
 to get back to school.  If not high school then get your GED and get to
 SPJC.  You need to learn how to write better, since that's what you
 like.  You should try getting better at what you like.  And learning
 more stuff.  You're a good writer, but there are a lot more things to
 write about than the depressing nature of life, and a lot more words to
 learn.

        I think you could become a freelance writer or a journalist if
 you went to school.  You have to go to school to learn more about the
 world and the things people talk about in writing, if you know what I
 mean.  Like newspapers don't need you to major in journalism but you
 have to have a degree in something or be in college and work there as
 an intern, because they don't just hire people who like to write.
 Magazines will take stories that people write, features, but it is
 extremely hard to make a living doing that.  If you went to SPJC, got
 some kind of transportation and a job, you could work for their
 newspaper and you would be the best writer there because those people
 all totally suck.  You could take journalism with Linda Yakle!  She is
 so cool.  She is like the coolest woman on that campus, and probably
 the best teacher.

        I was taking journalism with her before I left to move up here
 and had to drop it.  She's really funny and a smart ass kind of feminist
 woman, I think.  Mr. Byrd just sent me a christmas card saying
 him and his wife are probably going back to Florida so he will work at
 SPJC again in the spring while working on his dissertation, to get
 some money.  That means you could take his class, and you would like him
 a lot.  He's a really cool guy and I know him real well, it would be
 cool if you could take his creative writing class if he's teaching
 that again.  That would be great if you could do that.  That would be
 like the perfect thing for you.  I don't know if he'll be teaching that
 there this year or not, but I'll ask him.  I mean if you're not doing
 anything about high school, and not learning anything, there is no point
 in being there.  If you are still depressed like when you wrote some of
 that journal thing, by the way, you ought to be on medication.  It runs
 in our family, it's an illness -- it's not a cynical state of mind.  I
 like cynical states of mind, I don't like wanting to die and wasting my
 life away because that's all I can accomplish.

        If you want to go to a doctor, I think you would like that guy I
 went to down there.  I can't remember his name right now.  But he wasn't
 bad.  Anyway, just thinking out loud here, but see the thing is you have
 your whole life to figure out, at your age, and I never really managed
 to do that,  I am still trying to do it, and the sooner you get a handle
 on it, the better off you'll be.  As my teacher said one day, "Smart
 people who don't do anything with their minds are a dime a dozen".  They
 are.  It's true.  It is hard to do anything with your mind if you have
 no motivation to do anything, and depression kills motivation like a
 pesticide.  And then some people, they sit around on the internet all
 day on some of these weird depressed people places, like I actually did
 for a little while, and they sit there talking about the pain and the
 agony of it all and how they want to slit their wrists, and jump out the
 window, and meanwhile, the fucking idiots are sitting there typing on a
 computer and doing nothing to solve their problem or change their
 situation.

        And the reason they do that is it's comfortable.  It's a hell of
 a lot easier to spend your time thinking about how miserable you are
 and how pointless everything is and how hopeless and how it never
 changes and how there is NOTHING you can do about it, than it is to pull
 your ass up and force yourself to take a shower and get dressed and get
 yourself out the door, and face the boring, little pointless world in
 which we live, and try to do something to make it not so boring or
 pointless to you anymore.  It's easier to sit on the internet like
 those people do writing about their existential agony than it is to go
 do the dishes.  But the thing is, once you do the dishes, you have clean
 dishes and you can eat.  Then there is one thing that is done.  It is
 just one small thing, but that is the way that you change your life.  It
 is not as romantic as people like to think - depression.

        I have had 12 years of serious experience with it, and there was
 nothing good about it, it wasn't deep, it wasn't artsy, it isn't
 something that makes me or more REAL person than the rest of the world.
 I mean, of course when you are depressed you experience I kind of depth
 of emotion or of reality than other people do.  You see all the crap
 for what it is, and sometimes it makes me think I am sort of able to do
 something other people can't do.  But I would give that up in a second
 for a mediocre little life where I didn't see all that crap.  I would
 and I'm not kidding because the only thing that depression is done for
 me is fuck up everything I ever wanted to do and damn near kill me a
 million times and make me feel more dead than alive half the time. I am
 not saying this really to you, I"m just thinking here, like about some
 of those poser alternative black-clad kids who think they really get it
 all because they read the bell jar in 9th grade and they knew what some
 of that was.  The Bell Jar is where I spent most of my life, you know?
 This is not something you get printed on a fucking t-shirt.  This is
 not something you're proud of.

        I was looking at these internet sites last night, and I think I
 sent you the URL for one, and that one was connected to other ones, and
 the thing is, about all these people, is these people are not suffering.
 The people who go on the internet and write about the scars on there
 arms are not the ones who suffer.  Because if you're really suffering,
 if you really "can't take it anymore" as those kind of people like to
 say, then you DO something about it. It's like when you're dying of
 starvation, you'll eat grass if that's the only thing around but you
 won't sit around talking all day about how hungry you are and how it
 feels to be dying of starvation. The people I feel sorry for are the
 ones who go to the shrink, go to the therapist, take the medicine, try
 to change themselves, try all the crap, and it doesn't work, and the
 depression stuff overcomes them despite their efforts to get rid of
 it.  I know what that is like and it is a lot worse than being one of
 these little bastards who sits there and makes a website for everyone
 to come and talk about the misery of life and how many times they cut
 themselves, and how they are going to kill themselves, and meanwhile,
 none of those people wants to hear about the therapist or the doctor or
 the medicine or the responsibilty you have to take for your own life,
 they don't want to hear about that because that's not dramatic enough,
 that's too boring.

        It's much more DEEP to sit around acting like you're helpless.
 Those people are fucking losers.  I don't even know why I sent you
 that URL for that one site because the longer I looked at it the more
 it made want to send hate mail to them.  Anyone who sits on the
 internet and makes a little page for a memorial to her email friends
 who killed themselves, and never mentions any of the treatments for
 depression or the things that you can do to try and make life liveable
 deserves to be shot. That's all I can say about that.  They make me
 sick.  I realize I am rambling on here and you're probably going to
 think I've lost my fucking mind (that happened years ago, BTW), but I
 just wanted to tell you this because I learned some crap from a lot of
 crappy experience and it's not the good way to learn it.  I love Sylvia
 Plath's writing, and Anne Sexton's and I've read a lot of depressing
 stuff because it was nice to be able to see that there were people who
 actually put into writing the things that I experienced, but at the same
 time, I know that depression feeds on itself.  It likes itself.  It
 draws you only to depressing things, because once you don't have any
 rose-colored glasses but have black ones instead, a lot of the
 superficial shit in life just annoys you.

        But the thing is, spending all your time with those depressing
 books and thoughts and people, like I did much of the time with books
 and like when I went to these depression support groups for a little
 while, it can be useful when you really are at the lowest point, but it
 is not a way to get yourself out of there.  I don't believe in any god,
 but I do believe that there is a reason that we are on this planet.  It
 might be a reason we come up with ourselves, it might be that we are
 just able to do something for somebody one day that nobody was around
 to do, and I don't believe in any religious shit or in the idea that
 everything has meaning and there are no coincidences, that's all
 bullshit, but I do think that everyone has something they want to do
 with their lives, and that when people give up on that, then their life
 really is meaningless and they might as well kill themselves.  But if
 they choose not to completely give up they have a chance, and the fact
 is that everybody alive chose not to really give up because if they
 didn't they'd be dead already. If you really want to be dead you can
 make it happen, and all the people who do suicide attempts that don't
 kill them usually have some little tiny part of themselves that wants to
 live and wants to be found. And those people don't want to admit that,
 because once you admit then you have to start doing something about it.

        Depression kills people and it's horrible, but it doesn't have to
 kill people.  I feel more sorry for the guy who kills himself while he's
 on prozac than for all the hundreds of thousands who never wanted to try
 prozac who never tried anything and just ended it all without trying
 first.  I think I am going to put some of this on that web page I'm
 making. The depression page.  What do you think I should put on there?
 Let me know.  Talk to ya later."

 !!=====!!

        I fuckin' told you!

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 !! (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS!   #372 - LOGGED BY: LILNILHIL - 12/22/98 !!