11 Key Signs You’ve Reached Peak Bleak
You begin to talk to yourself like that overly aggressive football coach who feels that negging their players into submission is doing God’s work.
“Being alive is hard.” Whenever I have that lukewarm, sad sack of a thought, I know that I’ve reached a tiny plateau of darkness, that mental space that’s juuuust on the cusp of being a real problem. A budding problem, kinetic problematic energy, if you will. Peak bleak is fed up. It’s being four, five seconds from saying what you’re really thinking, except for what you’re thinking is just pretty dark. Positive Pollys, please miss this post. Here are a few of the thoughts the rest of us have when it’s gotten #dark.
Friday Night Lights
1. “Shut the fuck up.”
To strangers, yourself, your parents, the Lexus that cut you off on your morning commute, that selfish person on the subway who’s taking up three seats for themselves and their backpack, everyone. I mean, you’d scarcely say it out loud — well, you thought you wouldn’t be that rude out loud but if someone tries you one. More. Time.
2. “I should just quit everything and move to the woods.”
And then you think that you should quit quitting, and then you feel like an idiot and you keep going, but you can’t shake the fantasy of just quitting and relocating to a log cabin forever. You have no idea how you would survive in the woods without Hatchet level skills, but you watched Lost and Survivor, right? If Jeff Probst can survive on an island with nothing but several idiots, a camera crew, and probably a nice hotel, then…yeah, no. Fuck the woods. You’d still like to Office Space smash your router into little tiny bits, though.
3. “I hate the Internet. I hate technology. I wish —”
Modern life is hard and full of blue light that makes you stay awake longer and displays images of shiny things and bodies that you want and — fuck, it’s exasperating. But you know what’s more exasperating? Plagues, blatantly racist and sexist practices, a lack of medical technology, and the inability to communicate with your loved ones and/or the world at large. In the end, you know you don’t want your ass in some Pleasantville situation. Reese fucked up in that movie.
4. “Maybe I’ll go back to school.”
Oh. Loans. Right. You could just start staying up late and eating poorly again, though. Shit. Already doing that, huh? Could always add a few Bob Marley posters.
5. “I should see a doctor.”
My addiction to medical care is borne entirely out of anxiety and procrastination: why sit alone, diagnosing what’s wrong with yourself and others, when you can take advantage of your last sweet years on your parent’s health insurance and have medical professionals do it for you? There’s nothing quite as comically bleak as when a doctor says “well, everything looks good” and you think “oh…greaaaaaat.” Happy to be in good health, less happy about that fact that you’re neurotic as fuck and don’t have an explanation for how #dark you’ve become.
6. “Dark.”
Is this just me? I often find myself thinking “damn, that’s dark” as a response to one of my own thoughts, as if I am the little cartoon devil on my own shoulder — which I guess I am, given that those cartoons are the animated version of the two polarities existing in one’s psyche. Sure.
7. “I should do what I love. I’m gonna *insert ridiculous thing you haven’t done in years here*
Play hacky sack. Sing back-up vocals for…no one at all. Just be a struggle back-up vocalist, something that seemed like a reasonable possibility when you were 10. Audition for American Idol, as if that helped anyone past Carrie Underwood. Run for office, just like Clay Aiken. Oh damn. Clay Aiken. He really made that mid-career switch. Yeah, maybe I’ll stick to my career then? Maybe don’t pull a Clay Aiken?
8. “Fuck this weather.”
Because even the planet — an indifferent sum of sediments that does not care about you at all — feels like it’s telling you to go fuck yourself.
9. “Tough shit.”
At some point in peak dark times, you begin to talk to yourself like that overly aggressive football coach who feels that negging their players into submission is doing God’s work, like repeatedly calling yourself a pussy will get your best self back. It won’t — you’re not Riggins — but it’s a nice placebo. Plus it lets you be the protagonist or emotionally stunted ancillary character of a cheesy sports drama for a hot second, so that’s a fun bit.
10. “I want to sleep forever.”
Die but not die, you know? Just a cozy nap that lasts for the rest of the month and gets you out of this period of being the black hole of your universe — not fun at parties, not fun during waking hours. Far more fun when in the throes of REM.
11. “Fuck this.”
Short. Sweet. Agressive. Unnecessary. Uncalled for and to the point. Peak bleak in a nutshell, one that you need to crack and eat the salty pistachio out of, because that’s how I think about silver linings. Go crack nuts and move on. I don’t know, man. I’m just trying to live. Cheers. 
