mildly amusing that the European version of Inkhaven is only one week in August because people need their holidays 😅 I will still likely be applying, though!

Literally nobody listen to me for the next few months but: every city should have a designated clubhouse for heartbroken (& otherwise actively sad) people, where you can go be in public but without anyone expecting you to be normal. Like a place where you can go order a latte, break open your laptop & then just sob quietly to yourself for three hours. And nobody is uncomfortable about it & in fact new friendships get forged between people who suddenly have a lot of spare time on their hands. Anyway, I think that this would fix society.

Here is a list of things that I wish I had accepted earlier during my period of debilitating depression from ~2018-2020: a. I will be a burden to my friends, family, and society for a while. This is OK. I will feel like I am useless, failing at life. But it is meaningful for many people in my life (even strangers) to support me. My ego will HATE to hear it, but accepting help is actually of form of contribution b. I will feel worse than I thought it possible for a human to feel for a while. This is not OK. But it can be redeemed by learning about the nature of suffering. Now that I'm on the other end, I feel like a much more complete person. If someone asked me, "Would you rather have not been suicidally depressed for ~2yrs?" I would actually struggle to answer. It was that formative c. I will feel like life has no purpose. But lack of purpose might actually necessary. It might actually be the wisdom of depression – to show me that I am wrong about the purpose of my life. It might be that the thing that I *believe* to be the purpose of my life is actually incomplete or hurting me: • "I think I need to be a burnout workaholic to be good" but maybe that's not true • "I think I need someone other than god/the universe to love me" but maybe that's not true The suicidal impulse is telling you this: not "let your body die" but rather "let die the thing that you're convinced you can't live without" I was only able to get better once I was forced to accept these things. Mileage may vary