The Regularness of Life

I was just watching some random clips of The Sopranos, as I every so often do, and I came across one of my all-time favorite scenes. It's season one, Tony gets picked up by Christopher who arrives late and after a string of recent screw-ups. Tony chastises him in his typical Tony way, but then Christopher opens up and they have something of a rare moment. And this moment is very relevant, maybe one of the most important moments in the entire show, especially as it pertains to the more psychological aspects of it, because it's the first moment where Tony and Christopher talk about depression. And the way it's phrased by Christopher, the way a relatively uneducated man verbalizes his innermost feelings, it's just so poignant and full of depth that I've come to steal the phrase and use it myself when describing what it truly is like to feel depressed – It is to constantly struggle when facing the regularness of life.

“Can I try and explain here?... I don't know, Tony... It's like just the fuckin' regularness of life is too fucking hard for me or somethin', I don't... I dunno.” – Christopher Moltisanti

Sometimes it feels damn near impossible to explain depression to someone who ain't depressed. It's not that you're lazy to get out of bed and go to work, it's more that you don't see the point in anything to begin with, and therefore you get kinda lazy, and therefore you get more depressed, and therefore you get more lazy, and so on. This makes it so that getting up out bed isn't hard just because it's nice and cozy in there, because sometimes it really isn't, sometimes even lying in bed leaves us sick and nauseous, or at least I get that way from time to time. No, it's more that the act itself has been made senseless to you, and therefore nothing really matters. In this manner I'm left speechless when arguing with people who immediately describe the troubles of their daily life as a way to make it seem you don't have it all that bad. You get up at a certain hour, they get up an hour earlier, you have to do certain tasks, they have to do harder tasks, you get home late, they get home way later, and on it goes this thing of ours... It seems on every level they have it way worse than you, so why are you depressed? What have you got to be depressed about? I suppose it's nothing and it's everything, it's that the actions themselves, even the simplest daily things, are made gray and null and void... Nothing makes sense anymore.

So how can you get the point across? I myself don't know all that well, I'm just improvising here. But to the normal person it should be made clear that it feels pointless to argue about the difficulty of this action or that action when to the depressed mind every single action feels impossible. In fact, most actions, even the simplest of things, feel downright illogical. For example, the other day I had to shave, and I had to put immense pressure on myself to actually do it, and when I shaved half my face I had to put even more pressure on myself to shave the other half. When that is the feeling, when even that small thing is a struggle in your daily life, how can you do more difficult things, let alone do them with a smile on your sad, sad face? It seems as though you can't, it seems as though the pointlessness is, in and of itself, the big source of your nausea. And I write this now because I tried writing this selfsame article a few months earlier as a brief distraction from my nausea, and from my blues... Now I done return to it, a tad more calm and sober, and writing on a neat new computer too, which is cool to be sure, but all the while that same difficulty is there, the same weird voice that tells me that not going to the supermarket is basically the same as going, yes is the same as no, up is the same as down, and if two plus two is five then so be it, I'm not no mathematician no how... Ain't nothing makes sense no more.

As for Chrissy, and his associates in general, you might think they are too headstrong and too out there in the mafia to live a normal life, to have a nine-to-five selling patio furniture and whatnot. But maybe it's not quite that, it's not that they are too headstrong or strong in general, maybe it's that they are too weak, maybe facing the regularness of life really is too hard for Chrissy, and that feeling is thereby accurately portrayed and subsequently understood by anyone on a remotely similar boat. Because it's not so much that waking up early is the trouble per say. While back I myself was waking up quite a bit before the alarm clock rang out, so it's not so much a physical, quotidian, animalistic laziness. It really is more so along the lines of simply not seeing the point, of not wanting A because you don't want B because you don't want C, and so on, all the way to the bank. Then again maybe it is just precisely that, maybe everyone does feel that same difficulty but they just hide it a tad better. It could well be that but it just don't feel that way, it instead feels more like although degrees of difficulty obviously vary among folks, the nature of the difficulty itself varies too. And as for myself I always daydreamed-a-bein' a great poker player, but I might be a pretty terrible one, especially because I really can't sense any difficulty on any of the folks around me, seeing them as nothing but happy-happy wanderers... Nothin' don't make no sense no more.

On the other hand, as far as facing the regularness of life goes, I'm reminded of this one girl I done met once, though I ain't spoke to her more than one or a two times, and all of them wind. And even though in my writing the mention of girls often alludes to something else I've come to think about a whole lot, which is beauty and the inherent value of beautiful things in this here world, this girl was anything but. It's not without shame I aim to admit this but it rings very true, and though I ain't no prize myself, any measure of objectivity leads me to conclude that if this girl was beautiful, then beauty don't mean nothin'. She was of an unbecoming figure, her face quickly evoked the sheer power of a mother's love, her teeth were blunt and had significant gaps in between, and the roots of her hair were thin to the point where her scalp was quite visible. Baldness is sometimes something of an issue even for men, so for women it's even worse, I say supposin'... But anyway, all this to mention that I found myself before a person who had quite a few reasons to dislike herself, and to therefore struggle when facing the regularness of life in a world so concerned by outward appearance, as I myself tragically am. And yet this girl seemed, at least to me, perfectly happy... Don't make sense no more, nothing does.

In all things, this girl's strength and apparent ease with which she faced everyday life tormented me, it crossed my mind as a personal offense to me. Maybe it's all false, maybe it's all in my head, maybe she did have tremendous trouble when facing the regularness of life, of her life. But if she did then she hid it extremely well, and as far as I could gather, she had the tremendous talent to enjoy life in its simplest forms. She had her pretty notebooks and pens, her hats and winter coats, she even had her damned purple stapler and her corny stories about thinking she had done missed the bus when in reality she hadn't. Hell, she even had all the documents neat and tidy way before anyone else had, and she made it a point to sit right at the front of the classroom, thereby quickly becoming the teacher's pet, but in a nice kind of way. Outside of class I couldn't help but imagine how she'd just go home, enjoy her lunch, her YouTube videos, her movies, her music, her zany TV shows, her whatevers or somethin' or other. And in all this I'm left deeply, deeply offended at how, though light-years away from perfection my own self, I feel in this here hand I have some overcards to her pocket pair, and yet I'm far more unhappy than this girl will likely ever be... Not nothin' make any sense no more.

Now, in an effort to loop back around a bit, though I'm not a mobster, sadly, I feel I can relate to Chrissy's words, and Tony's too all throughout the show, because it really is strange how seemingly normal people can enjoy things in and of themselves, and can face the regularness of life with one of 'em tired but happy smiles, like a grandmother. That being the case it occurs to me how depression is insidious, how it permeates all aspects of your life whilst also remaining weirdly ethereal. It's nowhere and it's everywhere, it's dreamlike and fleeting but you can also almost bite it and chew it, though alas, you caint digest it. On that note I'm left undecided if everyone has a bit of depression and therefore the regularness of life is difficult to everyone in this world, it's just that some are better at hiding it, or if only a few miserable bastards have depression and therefore the regularness of life really is indeed more difficult to some than it is to others. The first option would constitute a generalized problem with a funny degree of scope, while the second option would constitute a specified problem with a degree of bad luck to miserable fellas like poor old me. I'm not sure which option is best... Any sense no more nothin' makes.

Irregardless, I feel as though I'm a-ramblin' now without much to say... Having initially left this article unwritten, and having started it as a mere distraction in the first place, and having not much to say to begin with, it all left me now feeling rather vapid and winded. Suffice it to say, I suppose, that this expression with which Chrissy describes his feelings of depression is a dead-on accurate depiction of these life blues, and that to explain it someone who don't quite get it is as difficult as it is simple. Because it really is a difficulty with the regularness of life, the simple doing of things in hopes to achieve other things, as when the meaning behind one thing fails, the chain buckles and eventually snaps. I reckon then in some sense one needs to view the small things in life as ends in and of themselves, so that going through the regularness of life isn't about asking constant why questions, but instead answering every doubt with one or two why-nots. Maybe this done startin' ta make some sense, and maybe most folks do get depression after all.

In essence then, whether or not an afterlife exists, all we do in life is a distraction, even the most meaningful of things. And then it seems to me that sometimes, if you look close, you'll find a whole lot of beauty in something simple and boring and plain ol' regular.