In defense of misery

A while ago, while flipping through the channels late at night, I stopped, briefly, on a movie titled “Amy’s Orgasm.” No, I didn’t stop my channel-surfing because I thought that it was soft-core porn, as I had actually heard of the movie before; I was just a little amused by something that the titular owner of the “little death” was saying.
(There’s your lesson for the day; some people refer to an orgasm as a “little death.” Oh yeah, and heheheheh, I said “titular.”)
Basically, Amy was the author of a self-help book for women which put forth the notion that a woman can have a happy, healthy life, and here's the hook, without a man.
I think it will come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever seen a movie that despite the belief that served as the basis for her financial success, Amy, in fact, was desperate to land herself a man.
In any case, in the scene I was watching Amy was talking to her parents, who were commenting on how much better her life would be if she found herself a man to settle down with.
Again, if you haven’t ever seen a movie in your life, you would expect that, since Amy espouses a belief system that is based on the idea that a woman doesn’t need a man to make her life complete, she would object. Instead, shockingly (for first-time movie viewers), she agrees.
None of this is what amused me, though; it was what Amy actually said in response to her parents.
I’m paraphrasing, but it was basically, “Don’t you think I know that? Do you think I’m not looking for Mr. Right? It’s not like I have his number and just won’t call him or something; he just isn’t out there.”
It was an idea that, for me, struck a chord.
Of course, over the years I’ve developed pretty much zero tolerance for any movie or TV show centering on the difficulties that attractive, single women have trying to land themselves a man. Any man.
I mean, sure, experience has taught me that the world is literally overflowing with gorgeous, desperate single women, and after all, there are dozens of them milling about just outside my door even as I write this.
And we all know that men in general are just utterly opposed to the idea of becoming involved with attractive, single women, and getting them go out on dates is like pulling teeth.
Even so, the theme seems to be even more cliché than…well, me making sarcastic comments about how the world is overflowing with attractive, desperate single women.
Honestly, the biggest problem that I have with that particular theme is that, at some point, someone is bound to say something along the lines of, “All the good men are either gay or taken.”

Syllogism:
syl·lo·gism
n.
Logic. A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion; for example, All humans are mortal, the major premise, I am a human, the minor premise, therefore, I am mortal, the conclusion.
(From dictionary.com)

Using the above definition, draw a conclusion based on the major and minor premises listed below:

All good men are either gay or taken.
Jon is neither gay nor taken.

Okay, so it’s a conclusion that I came to a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean I need to have my nose rubbed in it…
In any case, the reason that Amy’s statement struck a chord with me wasn’t simply due to the parallels to my own lack of a romantic life, but to an entirely different aspect of who I am: namely, my unhappiness.
Forget the question of why I’m so unhappy. Perhaps the more germane question is “Why I don’t just stop being unhappy?”
“Jon,” you may find yourself asking, “why don’t you just stop being so gloomy? Turn that frown upside down! Accentuate the positive! The glass is half full!”
…
In the first place, let me just say that, presently, I’m really not all that miserable. Despite my lack of companionship, frequent annoyances brought on by the greater mass of humanity, and a million other minor troubles, the fact of the matter is that I have a decent life. I get along with most of my family, my job is okay, I like my co-workers, I have a nice apartment, a few toys to keep me entertained, and, for one more episode at least, “Dead Like Me.”
And porn. Lots and lots of porn.
The whole curmudgeon routine is just that: a routine.
In my writings here on Threshold, and in my standard interactions with people, I exaggerate my misery. For the most part, particularly here, I do it for comic effect. After all, I think that, in all honesty, the funniest aspects of my life are those aspects that are also the saddest, most pathetic, and most pitiful. My crippling emotional problems are comedic gold, dammit!
It’s my bit. Dangerfield had “I get no respect.” Seinfeld has his whole “What’s the deal with…” thing. Dennis Miller’s got his obscure references.
I’ve got my misery.
And I like to complain. Honestly, who doesn’t? Maybe I complain more (maybe even a LOT more) than you, but the odds are you do complain at least once in a while. It’s a natural human reaction to life.
And apparently I’m just “Mr. Negativity” or something, but as much as I do focus on the negative, and I don’t smile, have you (those of you who actually know me) ever noticed how much of my time is spent laughing? Do you ever notice when I do say something positive (and, occasionally, I do), or do YOU only notice the negative?
As a somewhat related aside, this reminds me of something that used to happen periodically back when I worked at a grocery store.
I’d be sitting in the break room on my break, or on lunch, or whatever, and some other employee would come in. If it wasn’t someone that I was actually friendly with, I might simply say, “Hey,” and leave it at that, not feeling any particular need to engage in small talk, which usually seemed to be in line with what the other person was thinking.
Invariably I’d hear about these encounters from my sister, who also worked in the store. She’d say, “So and so said to me ‘Your brother is so quiet. I sat in the break room with him and he never said a word.’”
My sister would usually respond to this statement with, “Well, what did you say?”
The answer would always be, “Well, nothing.”
So, if I didn’t say anything, and the other person didn’t say anything, why is it that I’m the quiet one? Why is it my responsibility to initiate a conversation?
Maybe, as some people have suggested, I simply radiate an aura of unfriendliness. Maybe, as some others have suggested, though I don’t see how this can be so, I’m intimidating somehow. I honestly don’t know. Most of the time I’m not going out of my way to seem hostile or unfriendly, and the odds are that if you engage me, I will actually converse with you.
But in all honesty, if I didn’t initiate them first, the odds are I would have had a lot fewer conversations in my life…
In any case, getting back to my point, for whatever reasons (genetics, life experiences, chemical imbalances: whatever), focusing on the negative and feeling at least a little depressed are ingrained aspects of my personality. They’re as much a part of who I am as the fact that I’m right-handed, or that I don’t like the taste of fish.
Even though I’m not quite so miserable as I sometimes make myself out to be (or more to the point, as some people think I make myself out to be), the fact of the matter is that I’m not an especially happy person.
I have moments of happiness, which, I’ve come to believe, are all that anyone can reasonably expect out of life, such as watching an episode of DLM, or reading something by Neil Gaiman or Alan Moore, or reading the latest issue of “Catwoman,” which, as scripted by Ed Brubaker, is one of the things I most look forward to every month, or having a pretty girl smile at me, or going for a walk on a beautiful day, or remembering when my niece Jourdan used to fall asleep with her head on my leg as I’d read, “I Love Spaghetti” to her, or, well, any one or any combination of countless things that can bring me some amount of happiness.
But there is no overarching happiness in my life, and in general, yeah, I do tend to have a black cloud hanging over my head, and I’m never going to be cheerful, or optimistic, any more than I’m ever going to be outgoing and charming or suddenly grow wings and fly.
And that’s just the way it is. Why? I don’t know; it just is.
But just as Amy commented that it’s not a matter of having Mr. Right’s number and just refusing to call, for me it’s not like I could just magically choose to be happy and I’m refusing to do it.
Do you honestly think that if I had some means to just magically make myself happy and well-adjusted I wouldn’t choose to do it?
Okay, maybe you do, but the fact of the matter is, if I could just choose to be happy, I would. Maybe I’m the most miserable human being in the world, maybe I’m not, but the fact is, I AM human, and, as such, I do honestly seek out happiness. No one wants to be miserable any more than anyone wants to be paralyzed, or wants to have a heart defect, or wants to have a limb amputated.
“Just be happy,” you tell me, as if you would walk up to a paraplegic and say, “Just walk, or “Just make your heart work,” or “Just grow another one.”
So many people suggest that I go out and do things that will take me away from my fixation on myself, but the fact is that no matter what I do, it’s completely impossible for me to shut off my big, overanalyzing brain. No matter where I go, there I am, and nothing can occupy my entire consciousness to the extent that my brain isn’t still working somewhere in the background. In my whole life, the only activity I’ve found that even comes close to shutting down my thought processes was drinking, and that’s just not an option anymore, and it never really worked that well anyway, unless truly MASSIVE amounts of booze were involved.
Besides, any positive qualities that I do have stem from the same source as the negative. If my brain weren’t constantly analyzing and re-analyzing the minutiae of my existence it’s not like I would somehow be some better, more well-adjusted version of Jon; I wouldn’t be Jon at all.
And when you suggest that I go out and do things, you neglect to take into account that I have gone out and done things. Lots of things. I haven’t spent my whole life sheltered away from the world. I’ve had a lot of experiences in my life, and maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason that they led me here. Maybe there’s a reason I isolate myself from the world.
Ultimately the suggestions seem to be that I go out and do things that I know that I wouldn’t enjoy. Maybe it’s just a defect in my own thinking, but somehow I just can’t follow the line of reasoning that says Jon + some activity he hates = Happiness!
Don’t bother trotting out the “You never know until you try” nonsense; I’ve never tried shooting myself in the head, but I can be reasonably certain that I wouldn’t enjoy it, and if it didn’t kill me it would at least leave me brain damaged.
Then again, maybe that would serve to effectively shut down my overactive brain. Hmmm…
No, strike that.
Okay, so you’ll say, “So you don’t have to go out and try country line dancing or anything, but what’s wrong with going out and doing something you enjoy.”
Like what? There honestly isn’t that much in life that I enjoy, and most of the things I enjoy are not enhanced by bringing other people into the mix, since I don’t really enjoy being around other people.
Not when I’m sober, anyway, and sobriety, as I’ve mentioned, is a requirement for, well, everything.
After 32 years I’ve probably gotten as good as I’m going to get at handling social situations, and the fact of the matter is that I don’t handle them all that well.
Again, that’s just another part of who I am.
Even with the aid of counseling and medication, I wasn’t appreciably more optimistic or cheerful. I managed to come back from the brink of near-suicidal depression, and I found ways to get through life without relying on booze, and I did learn to “count my blessings,” and any number of vague platitudes that help people make it through the day, but the fact remains that I’m never going to be fully happy. I’m always going to complain. I’m always going to see the glass as half-empty, or even dumped over and shattered on the floor, with one of the shards stuck in the bottom of my foot.
I’m always going to be at least a little depressed.
And I’m always going to make jokes about it.
It’s what I do.
All I can really say is “Don’t take things so seriously.” No, I don’t really think that I have the worst life in the world, yes, I do realize that there are millions of people who have it much, much worse than I do, and I do appreciate the many wonderful people and things that are part of my not-so-miserable life, and I do recognize that I have talents, even if I don’t capitalize on them to the extent that you all think I should.
Most of my misery, as expressed to you, is exaggerated for comic effect, and then that exaggeration gets exaggerated in your minds, and it just grows from there.
Relax. If I were really as depressed as you think I am, I’d be dead. I’d be utterly incapable of getting out of bed in the morning. It’s really that simple.
And honestly, what’s so wrong with being unhappy anyway? Why is it such a crime to be sad? You see all of these “inspirational” e-mails floating around telling you that you need to dance every day, force a smile under all circumstances, sing out your joy for all the world to hear, grab life by the throat and squeeze out every last drop of joy, and be happy, happy, HAPPY, dammit!
Life isn’t the town of Stepford. People are going to get unhappy from time to time, maybe even most of the time, but so what? What’s wrong with having an expression other than a plastered on smile once in a while?
Oh, sure, it’s a “downer” to be around someone who only focuses on the negative, but come on, be honest, who’s more irritating, someone who’s morbidly depressed or someone who is relentlessly cheerful? You know that, on some level, you don’t trust people who are always smiling.
If I were to suddenly and miraculously transform into some upbeat, positive, “Stepford Jon” who dotted his “i”s with little smiley faces, it would take you fewer than five minutes to say, “Jon, please go back to being unhappy.”
Just imagine me as some obscene parody of happiness walking around with a grin from ear to ear and espousing the joys of Joy, then step back from your imaginings and be thankful that I’m the miserable old crank that I am, and I think you’ll agree that we’re all a lot happier when I’m unhappy...