Spleen.

A very ignorant, angsty part of me wanted it to be depression. Because at least then I would know for sure that I was malfunctioning in determinate and conformist way. But it often seemed that what I was suffering from was a lot more subtle, imperceptible to others than it was to me. I would walk around with a  heart as heavy as a boulder for months and people would think that everything was dandy in my life. But I knew that it wasn't depression or bipolarity or any of the other illnesses; that would have made things too easy for me. It was this sort of spleen that symbolist poets would spend their lives writing about, a boredom so deep and monotonous that it consumed me relentlessly but ever so slightly, so that only the diseased would ever know of its presence. And whenever I would tell my friends or parents I was bored, they would start telling me of all the things that I could do with my time; I could work, or read, or go see a movie. Others would just say that intelligent people are never bored or alone but everybody knows that is bullshit reverse pop psychology. What was more worrying is that it was starting to become ever so clear that I had dragged that boredom after me for my entire life and that I couldn't actually remember a moment when it had felt differently. Don't get me wrong, sure I felt what you might call happiness, or joy or excitement, but always superimposed upon the uninterrupted, monotonous humming of my boredom. And then I started to wonder whether I was ever happy at all; was there a time, before what I can remember, before I was even conscious when this plague did not exist? Even more importantly, does everybody feel the same but some of us are just better at ignoring it or have too many distractions and not enough self-reflection? I would feel really fucking special if it was just me and the symbolist poets; so damn special and somber that, in my dreams, I would chat about how bored I am to Baudelaire over shots of absinthe. But after a very short-lived adolescence, I knew for sure I wasn't. There is absolutely nothing special about me, and I find it totally nauseating that I have to pretend there is, that I have to compete and be praised for my work and celebrate my victories. I was, to my mind, failing at being somebody, and not being brave enough to be a nobody. So, in the end I felt, more than anything, that I was trapped between my boredom and my cowardice.