Perception of misery

What does it take for one to say “I have all the reasons to be depressed”?

During the summer, most of my complaints went something like this: “I still don’t have a job and still don’t feel like doing anything about it, I’m such a lazy bitch” or “Gee, my ass looks big, my legs are too fat”. (mostly the latter, sadly). I also can’t do without mentioning my constant pissed off state towards the stupidity, jealousy and the fake-blondness of the common Turkish girl. During the summer, I sometimes thought that my life really sucked. (Needless to say that those thoughts were false and temporary)

Then came a sudden realization along with a heavy feeling of guilt, after reading the blog of a Lebanese friend written during last summer's Israeli occupation. I'd never really contemplated about what war does to somebody’s state of mind. Somewhere in her blog, she wrote: “All the time that I have spent structuring and maintaining, organizing and deciding, all the effort that I have made into building a self seems to have been broken against this enormous hegemonic body that is forcing its existence on me.” That really struck me. I never had to suffocate from the smell of dead bodies or constantly hear the sound military planes flying over my head and live with the fear that they might drop a bomb or two and I (or worse the people I love) might get killed any second.

Can it be true that, all the effort that you’ve put into establishing a sense of self, everything that you stand for can become meaningless under such great duress? And if so, why do I still worry about the size of my butt? Shouldn’t I be grateful that I’m in a state to worry about my butt or other trivialities in the first place?

I guess it all boils down to that famous quote from The Fight Club: “We're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives”.