heggs_bayer

I haven't felt anything besides low burning self contempt for years. Emotions like sadness and happiness elude me. I haven't sincerely shouted for joy or wept in years. I also have no desire to get close to other people and form relationships. This makes it nigh impossible for me to give a shit about even important things. While I don't feel much pain anymore, I also lack the spark that makes life worth living. I feel like a soulless automaton.

Does this sound like it's related to neurodivergence? I'm 100% depressed, but years of therapy and various different medications haven't done much, so I feel like there must be more to it.

Main

People I know are sharing polymarket predictions about the presidential election, and just reading about how the predictions work sounds like the most capitalism-brained nonsense. Like, try reading this without shaking your head:

On Polymarket, you can buy and sell shares representing future event outcomes (i.e. "Will TikTok be banned in the U.S. this year?")

Shares in event outcomes are always priced between $0.00 and $1.00 USDC, and every pair of event outcomes (i.e. each pair of "YES" + "NO" shares) is fully collateralized by $1.00 USDC.

Shares are created when opposing sides come to an agreement on odds, such that the sum of what each side is willing to pay is equal to $1.00.

The shares representing the correct, final outcome are paid out $1.00 USDC each upon market resolution.

Unlike sportsbooks, you are not betting against "the house" – the counterparty to each trade is another Polymarket user. As such:

Shares can be sold before the event outcome is known_ (i.e. to lock in profits or cut losses)

There is no "house" to ban you for winning too much.

Thing is, I'm 3 stupid 5 explaining why this stuff sounds off. Am I just doing a liberalism by speaking without investigating more? Is this as BS as it comes off as to me?

I've basically lost all desire to socialize with people and improve myself. I've been seeing a therapist and taking various different psych meds for years and have basically made no improvement. All I want to do anymore is eat way too much junk food (I feel like my friends and family would judge me very hard if I went back to toking and drinking like I did before rehab), play video games, and lie down doomscrolling chapo.chat.

The worst part is I know I have a lot going for me in life and I have a negative number of excuses to be this way: I'm in a cushy overpaid computer toucher job with a promotion on the near horizon, I'm doing well in my education, I haven't had anything really bad happen to me in years, and even the things that have gone bad for me are incredibly mild at most - first world problems. Even when I do the occasional good thing like walking or not eating like complete garbage for a day, I'm incapable of actually feeling any sense of accomplishment.

Whenever I talk to any of my mental healthcare providers about it, their advice basically boils down to "let yourself feel good about good things". There's also the more actionable advice, like use a sun lamp to make up for lack of sunlight and make some time to write my thoughts down every day, but I suck about following through on them. Trying to make myself feel good beyond split-second dopamine hits from base activities like stuffing my hamplanet pie hole with empty calorie laden garbage feels like trying to draw blood from a stone.

Often times I find myself thinking that maybe people like OrganizeOrDie are right. Depression is no excuse to stay out of organizing (something I'm also shirking my responsibility to do, largely because I'm at an intersection of privilege where I benefit from capitalism and imperialism far more than I am harmed by it), let alone doing the barest minimum to keep myself healthy, all of which will at least increase my chances of not feeling like an soulless automoton all the time. I know that humans are social beings and that community is essential to being human, but my temperment makes it so I don't actually feel good from socializing - not even in a social anxiety or lack of social skills kind of way - so I stay in my room and continue to rot. I feel like I'm part of the problem and not part of the solution and that if I'm incapable of actually becoming better then I may as well just self-destruct in silence.

I've been depressed basically since I was a child - over 20 years at this point - and it's so ingrained in who I am that I don't know how to get rid of it, or if I even want to. People who want things work to make them a reality after all.

I'm not sure what I want or expect from this vent-post. I just hate that I am the way I am and have no will to change.

Mine is when a lib says that a socialist leader is filthy rich because le ebil dictator owns literally everything in the country.

In 8^th^ grade my social studies teacher showed The Notebook to the class to help teach us about WWII. The movie had less than 5 minutes of content about the war; the rest was only tangentially related at best because it was set in that time period.

Granted, its to prevent overcentralization of Lemmy and not related to their shit takes, but still