venting. sad, don't read

nothing makes me feel more alone and alienated than hearing other people's experiences with depression. i'm depressed, i'm told, and depressed people are always told "you are not alone" as something that's supposed to be comforting. and people seem to be comforted by it. so why aren't i? i guess whenever people say what helps them, or what changed their perspective, i try and it doesn't help me. am i just fundamentally flawed? i don't think so, it seems silly to suggest. i'm not special. nobody is. i definitely don't have some ultra-unique brain worthy of study or something. i'm just some dude.

i do keep checking out what people suggest though. i guess some vanishingly small part of me is looking for a reason to keep kicking. so i watched David Foster Wallace's commencement speech at Kenyon College on youtube today, after seeing many people say it is a big influence on their worldview. the gist of it, from what my dumb brain could gather, is that you should learn to think you're not the main character of life, there is life all around you, and that you should be considerate of that and pay attention to it. i could have gotten that wrong, idk. but it didn't really change anything for me. i've always tried to be considerate of others, and realize that when i see someone being shitty it might just be a low point for them, and not reflective of who they truly are. obviously i could never communicate that idea as well as he could, but it's more or less a guiding principle in my life. so i saw a bit of myself in him, though he's obviously much better than me. and he took his own life. what hope is there for me?