Being Happy Is Hard Work
Like many people, I struggle semiregularly with depression — or, as David Foster Wallace so fittingly called it, The Bad Thing. It doesn’t define me, but it does flare up from time to time, a swamp creature rearing out of my mind’s chemical pulp. Recently, amid a surge of badness so forceful it took me by surprise, I found myself wondering how it is that people like me — people who are healthy, loved, so privileged as to be blessed — can feel so sad? So beholden to The Bad Thing? On the surface, it doesn’t make sense.
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