Commercial Misery

Commercials kill. Like Peter returning home for Christmas and Folgers, which still brings a tear to my eye, although more recently it seems like a bad eighty's dick joke. Or the noir mouse tackle that left me breathless and no more interested in Doritos than I ever was. Even the ever-expanding Quizno’s lineup featuring R.O.U.S.’s and a sexually charged, ciabatta banging OILF has brought me to tears of laughter. These were life-influencing moments brought about because some white guy wanted to make a buck off of America’s obesity and the ad affected me.

Then along comes an ad that asks the hard hitting questions, and does so repetitively, haphazardly, and in a way that you’re surprised if it actually moves the product. But one day, the very day you realize life isn’t going the way it should be, that you have been held prisoner by your inefficacy, you see the commercial again. The day you realize that you are entering into your thirties in the worst shape of your life mentally, physically and emotionally, the question is asked again and this time you are forced to shelve the amusing retorts for a real answer.

Today, I answer. Where does depression hurt, Cymbalta asks? Grab a chair, you achy broad. We’re gonna sort this mess out. And by the way, the curled-up-on-the-couch-in-sweatpants look doesn’t translate to depression. Feminine-odor-and-itching claimed that nugget a decade ago.

For starters, in my wallet. Every time I go out to eat because I’m too tired to cook. Every time the boredom consumes me and I blow good bread on bad movies. Every time I sit alone in my head, not even driven enough to put pen to paper, floating in my mental shark tank with regrets and poor choices nipping at my feet, and I reach for the bottle and drink liquid money until I piss clear and think cloudy.

It hurts in my compassion. Now, to read my writings is to assume I hate everyone. This assumption would be correct. But along with my loathing there was always a balancing affection for kittens, family and people I wanted to wear like a hat. It kept me friendly and polite. This affection, however, seems to have gone the way of the buffalo, leaving in its stead an almost rabid narcissism and compulsive reclusiveness that, were I famous, my publicist would blame on “exhaustion and a vitamin deficiency”.

I have been bitter on and off for years, but this somehow gave way to a low-grade empathy and now manifests only as apathy. It is often hard work for me to care about anyone if there isn’t something in it for me. Maybe it comes with age. Maybe it’s chemical. All I know is that, throughout the years, one of the few appealing aspects about me was my compassion and ability to act on it. Now the world only has my dark wit and knuckle hair left to find endearing.

It hurts in my blind faith, worse than the day I learned God wasn’t real. And by “real”, I mean a mortal man behind a curtain actually righting the wrongs of the world and physically hearing my prayers. Blind faith is essential to our societal structure because our growing cerebellums eat questions and observations and shit intelligence into your brain. It allows us to trust our lovers, to not curse during dinner and to believe that not all black people will rob us.

My mind, however, is bloated from too many questions with no answers to help them pass. Not only do I barely believe in my fellow man, I pretty much only assume the worse. I don’t trust my lovers and I fucking love dinner conversations. I haven’t been robbed yet, but I’m sure it’ll be by a minority when it happens. Is all this my ignorance talking? No, because I’m smarter than you. Is this my self-esteem crying out? Maybe on the ‘lovers’ thing, but it doesn’t help to have painful references in your past. As far as I am concerned, it’s a deadly cocktail of bad judgment, failed goals and escapism I drink every night before I lay in the bed I have made.

The point of the commercial is not the problem but the solution, which to them is a pill, but for me may be more complex than fooling a few neurotransmitters. It hurts the sex-life, the nightlife, the easy life and blah blah. What they don’t tell you is that maybe you’ve been fucking up all your pathetic life and that your depression is being supported by your bad choices and is not the result of a chemical imbalance.

Where a rut kind of tickles, depression is a gaping sore that oozes needed energy. Although some people need your stupid drugs, Cymbalta, I don’t. I don’t need your bench-warming soccer mom stereotypically portraying an emotionally ravaged introvert. I’m not asking my doctor shit about you. What I’m going to do is work on it one day at a time. And the next time I see your commercial, my answer will be “in your wife’s black, syphilitic, gang-bang filled mouth”.