On not liking people

The odd effect of telling someone that you don’t like people, in general. Most people, when told this, are absolutely flummoxed, in shock and immediately assume one is depressed, or has a neurological disorder. This in and of itself, really isn’t that shocking to me, but I’ve starting seeing someone in my life who doesn’t like people start to medicate via drugs and seeing a shrink of sorts who proscribes them for said individual. I have nothing against the head shrinker, I have seen one myself for a good chunk of my young life, and I’m considering finding someone else after having moved out to my current local 3+ years ago and not finding someone else to replace the old shrinker that I saw usually every 3-2 weeks. My concern is not that this person in my life is seeking help, I think we can all agree that’s a damn good thing, certainly much better than doing something extremely rash…however, I wonder if the number of people who see themselves as “depressed” are actually loners, and people who don’t like people and can’t get themselves to accept that fact and thus think they are depressed, when it’s something else entirely. I know for years I thought/sorta knew I was depressed as such, and I think I truly was for a while, however, I don’t know how/when this happened, but out of that (perhaps by reading and article I remember reading and having a fucking light turn on saying “that’s me, damnit!”) came some realization that I indeed generally don’t like people.

This line that Jack Nicholson’s character Melvin says in the movie As Good As It Gets, when I saw/heard it, totally resonated with me: “What if this is as good as it gets?” And later on when he’s struggling to identify and then deal with his feelings for the lovely Helen Hunt, he laments that his life as he knew it, where he lived alone, did his own thing, was better than the agony of not knowing if someone likes/loves you, Eventually Melvin comes around, saying to Kinnear that he made a good point about his old life, asking “Was it really that good?”, Melvin concedes that his life wasn’t better before hand. But, the whole point is to say, who says we have to be chatty.

Moreover, if I choose never to get married, where is my time off for having my non-existent baby? Where’s my tax benefits for not getting into a marriage that would have been a heaping pile of shit? There are a whole host of “benefits” that married people, especially with kids, get in return. I’m not saying that us who CHOOSE to be single should get them all, but gimme a piece mother fucker, gimme a piece (Kudos, to Chris Rock)!!