So sad today.

I just finished so sad today, by Melissa Broder. I've mentioned her here before, she tweets under the name @sosadtoday.

The book is great. I flew through it. It’s a short collection of personal essays, all about her life, living with depression and anxiety and the ways in which she’s coped and continues to cope with her daily life.

I've been reading a lot of books about mental illness. Most of which have been memoir and personal essay. This is the first time that I really feel a book was written by someone of my generation and with my points of reference.

So much of the book is both heavy and detached at the same time. Broder has a lot of deeply existential threads throughout her work - and that just really spoke to me. I feel like she wrote the book for “people like me.” And I mean, she did.

So much of her work is reference-able. In her essay on her addiction to nicotine gum:

I chew the gum, because I don’t trust the universe to fill me up on its own. I can’t count on the universe to sate my many holes: physical, emotional, spiritual. So I take matters in my own hands. I give myself little “doggy treats” for being alive.

Preach. We all do this to an extent, but for me, those "treats" are often the only comfort I get. Again, this links to deep existential dread. 

The book is just so rich. She has a section on Effexor that again, I felt was written for me. Many of the questions she asks herself are questions I've asked myself. And though she and I are very very different, there are really strong ties as well, and though I'm sad that both she and I speak that dark language, I also felt comfort in the recognition of another. 

Highly recommended read.