Yours Truly, Me: Outtakes (Troyler)

✉️Letter #2✉️

Dear Tyler,

So, I guess I went through with writing to you again. And it's only a week later! But I had to. I had to vent a bit, and I didn't know who to turn to with my private thoughts, because I'm not sure if you've read my last letter or not ( I haven't decided which option sounds better yet ) but anyways, I try to keep the more melancholy thoughts away from my friends and family, so as not to worry them.

Anyways, one of my other close friends, a girl that I'm really close friends with-her name is Kerri-recently confessed that she was diagnosed with depression. It came as such a shock to me, because she always seemed so happy and cheerful and as if there wasn't anything to bother about in her life. I don't know, it just made me think: Is that how depressed people are? Is that how I am?

It's kind of scary to think about, the idea that so many people surrounding you in your everyday life might be suffering from something that they can't control, and they might not even know it, or they might've never told anyone about it before. Just so many people, walking around in a continuous state of melancholic indifference, both not caring at all and caring too much, and so many people probably have no idea how to help them, because no one talks about this kind of thing.

That also got me thinking; why does no one talk about depression? Or anxiety, or other mental illnesses. Why do people treat it like the plague? Then I realized... No one feels that it's alright to come clean and ask for help because society shames people for their mental illnesses. Because they're "weak" or "attention-seeking" or other descriptive words that don't make sense. Do people even realize that all of the above are actual conditions that can be identified with certain equipment, clearly visible to the human eye? Depression is just something that happens. No one expects it, no one ever thinks they'll get it, and some people don't "have a reason" to have depression, yet it still comes.

So does cancer. Yet no one is shamed for having a sickness that they can't control in THAT particular situation.

I won't dwell on that for now. Because that just leads to the next thing, about people being shamed for something that they can in no way choose or control. See, people are shamed for not being a male ( specifically cisgender, if you want to get technical ), straight, white, etc. Racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, all things that the people who don't suffer from insist aren't real or true, when they're alive and well. As a white cisgender man, I don't personally experience a lot of these discriminations, but I'm constantly wary of homophobia, and have been ever since I excepted my sexuality. And it's not even just homophobia, for fuck's sakes, there's biphobia, people who hate asexuals and aromantics and there's even people who don't know what a pansexual or polysexual or demisexual person is! Can you believe that? I know I didn't until I got a Tumblr. You know why?

Because no one talks about these things.

But the thing is, why does no one talk about these things? They're not crimes against humanity. All of the above are simply the way people are. It's like the fact that I don't like tomatoes, or bacon. A lot of people like each of these things, but I do not have a preference for them. It's as simple as that, and no one gives a shit.

By the way, why do people give a shit about this? Nothing about a person's life reflects on anyone else's, really. The fact that I will kiss boys and sleep with boys and marry a boy has nothing to do with anyone else's life but the boys I experience these things with, so why do you care? A person being black literally has no effect on a person's life. A person realizing that they were born in a body not suited for their true identity gender-wise literally has no effect on anyone's life. A person that doesn't experience sexual or romantic attraction to someone unless they're extremely close with them has nothing to do with anyone else.

I could go on and on about this for years. I'd probably fill up my entire notebook twice just discussing this, but I know you don't need to read all of this. You understand. I just had to get it all out. I know, I could talk about this with friends, but I don't want to bother them with rants that they've probably either heard a couple thousand times from other people or the Internet, or, even worse, bother them with something that they truly don't care at all about.

I read on somewhere that constantly thinking you're annoying someone with your very presence, and therefore keeping everything you want to say bottled up inside of you, is a symptom of depression. It sounds bad, but I really hope it's not. I want to be the least connected to it as possible, because as I already stated, no one wants depression. I'd really rather not have it, or at the very least have a less intense version of it if possible.

On the bright side, at least this personal experience I have with it will help me know how to help Kerri through this. Maybe not get past it, so much as make the presence of it less prominent in her life. I'd help her get past it if I could, believe me, but if I knew how to do that, I'd get over that hurdle myself.

Well, this letter was a mess. I drifted from topic to topic gradually, until I was in a whole other area. Kind of how my mind works, when I think about it. And my conversations, if you let me talk long enough without interruptions.

Thanks for either listening or ignoring, Tyler.

Yours Truly,

Me

Look, fair warning, none of the letters are going to be particularly long. Some might even be a paragraph, depending if I'm feeling spontaneous. But look, I updated! Quicker than I thought, considering that fact that I'm still writing II ( and I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with it right now whoops ). On the bright side, since the letters are short, I might find more time to update this more often, because they don't require as much effort for some reason to me. The words... They're the just really easy to write, I guess.

∞Hope