Emote

"Diamond in the Back" by Curtis Mayfield

...you may not have a car at all / but remember, brothers and sisters, you can still stand tall / just be thankful for what you got...

I love psychology because it is a branch of education that acknowledges our humanity in the truest sense.

Psychology is the mark of the "non-beast". Our emotions, behaviors, higher thinking processes, etc. are what removed humans from the viscious scene of surviving in the wild. We tamed the wild. We made civilizations and that is what separates us from all the other animals, although it doesn't make us better.

I love to study it. Psychology recognizes that we all are actually simple in all our complexity. We want people to love us, appreciate us, support us, and feel purposeful in our existence, essentially.

As I study it, my life makes more sense. I understand better what I went through in the last 2 years and why I may have gone through it.

Additionally, it makes me resent some people in my life all the more, as I understand the condition I was in.

Mostly, it makes me resent my parents. My parents are geniuses. They are two of the smartest people to have ever existed and I really don't say that just because they are my parents. They are brilliant. My mother is a highly educated healthcare professional, but even she withdrew from me.

It makes no sense. As learned as they are, coming from a strong, communal culture that boisterously explains that you should never abandon a child, they seemed to have deserted this way of thinking. I felt abandoned. I still feel abandoned. We talk now, very often, peculiar enough, now that I am better, now that my life is almost as it should be.

But I feel like they should have been there before. I feel like they gave up too easily. They feel like they did all they could. These are the discrepancies that pollute our lives.

This is important because a major part of truly getting out of the cycle of depression is forgiving them. I must let it go. They are, after all, human.

But to me, they did less than good humans should have done. The more I learn in class, the clearer their mistakes (and mine) become and I have a hard time letting such intelligent people (and generally good parents) off the hook.

I will say, however, that this too can be overcome. I overcame feeling purposeless, useless, helpless, like a failure, like I didn't deserve a life and I forgave myself for a lot of my poor decisions. Therefore, I should be able to overcome a little thing like resentment, right?

This is just life.