I Thought Moving Away Could Cure My Depression

I came to Jakarta because I thought I could prove to myself I could stop being depressed without medication. My promise here was that my tailoring school and then-boyfriend (now ex) could make me happy, but then depression followed me everywhere I went.

The darkness wouldn’t leave me; it turned out. I felt like a pathetic person wherever I lived.

However, reading Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy made me reconsider what it means to be pathetic. Mr. Korgy — a 40-year-old man who is dating his 17-year-old student — is often described by readers and reviewers as pathetic, and he seems to agree with their assessment:

Like the common consensus, I felt in my gut that he was written to be a pathetic character, but I wondered what about him was “pathetic.” On the outside, he is married to a financially successful wife and has a nice home (funded by his wife), while he takes care of their kids when his wife is at work.

The 17-year-old student, Waldo, describes Mr. Korgy as “hen-pecked” and “castrated” because of his “domineering” wife. This detail is intended to cement his pathetic nature, but outside the novel’s context, is it really pathetic for a man to have a breadwinning wife?

What exactly about Mr. Korgy makes him “pathetic”? Readers instinctively feel he is, but I struggle to articulate why. This question led me to look up the word’s meaning in the dictionary.

According to the Cambridge Dictionary:

Mr. Korgy is a contemptible character because he is in a sexual relationship with a minor.

But what about pity? Pitying someone means feeling sorry for them and looking down on them. What differentiates pity from sympathy is the presence or absence of the element of “looking down.” The protagonist pities Mr. Korgy because his wife dominates him, and therefore looks down on him.

However, is having a dominating wife an objectively pitiable condition, or is the issue his negative internal assessment of himself and the situation? Why can’t a man be respected if he takes care of the children while the wife works?

Beyond the dictionary definition, I also researched what people considered pathetic. The most common answer I found on Reddit and Quora was that someone is pathetic if they fail to be independent as an adult. For example, if someone still lives with their parents and is not financially independent.

The emphasis on “independence” is notable, as I see it as a Western cultural view. I am a Chinese-Indonesian raised in a deeply collectivist part of Indonesia, where Western morals are seen as contrarian and immoral.

Filial piety is one of the strongest moral values among Chinese-Indonesians. Families typically live in the same house for three generations because children are expected to care for their parents and grandparents.

A child who wants to leave home without parental consent is seen as anak durhaka, or a child who disrespects their parents. A common belief is that anak durhaka will be punished in the worst layer of hell. This example is one of many major moral differences between cultures and therefore changes what makes someone be labelled as “pathetic.”

If individualistic moral values are social constructs that do not apply to collectivist cultures, then patriarchal values — namely the idea that a man should be the head of the household — are also subjective social constructs.

Mr. Korgy might not be pathetic after all. Just contemptible.

. . .

Like Mr. Korgy, I felt pathetic, though that may be subjective. Under Western moral values, I am considered pathetic because I am 22, still live with my mum, and don’t yet have a proper job. Under Chinese-Indonesian values, I am considered pathetic because I lost my virginity before marriage and am therefore unmarriageable.

There are many reasons I (or anyone) might be considered “pathetic,” depending on who is doing the judging.

After getting diagnosed with C-PTSD, I committed to becoming a better person. Although I didn’t consider myself ambitious, I aspired to achieve modest, achievable goals. One of them was “make friends and be a good friend to a new person.” I was excited to make new friends at my tailoring school, and for a moment I forgot about my debilitating social anxiety.

I wasn’t ambitious, but trying to live a normal life, like other people, seemed like an extremely ambitious goal.

What seems easy to others, like making friends, being a good girlfriend, and showing up at work or school, takes a Herculean effort for me to maintain. It seems others maintain these things on autopilot, while I have to plan and think things through deliberately, and it feels painful to try so hard to convince myself to “Just Do It!”

Perhaps it was because I learned these things too late, having socialised online rather than in real life. People come across to me as abstractions, more understandable through the world of signs than through what those signs represent. If I imagined an “average family” in my head, I would picture an infographic showing male and female bathroom icons with 2.1 children.

Needing to do something physical, I had a little too much sex when I was in Melbourne. I wasn’t that horny, but I’d go crazy if I didn’t have physical human contact for a few days. I’d feel holed up in my room, and it was much easier to find guys who were interested in fucking me than to make friends.

I didn’t fit the common image of an average one-night-stand enthusiast; I wasn’t cold or detached. On the contrary, I found the experience meaningful, especially because my one-night partners would tell me things they wouldn’t share with people in their personal lives. I had guys vent to me about their career dissatisfaction, drug addiction, and depression.

I thought I was missing something, but I didn’t know what. I did all the right things: I saw a psychiatrist, got my meds, and took them regularly. I committed to going to the gym, and I’d feel good for a couple of hours before the bad thoughts returned.

Only three things gave me long-term, consistent comfort: my best friend, whom I love more than anyone else in the world; writing as a craft; and doing things with my hands, whether it was sewing, pattern drafting, pottery, or exercise.

C-PTSD is a lifelong struggle. I spent four years at university, graduating from having only bad days to having both good and bad days.

Maybe I wasn’t pathetic. Just pitiable.