So why am I not depressed?

[DaShi]

Some researchers believe that those who grew up in harsher conditions are better able to cope with stress than those who didn't, which explains why so many poor people aren't offing themselves over their conditions, while college students are swallowing bottles of vicodin because of a bad exam or a breakup. However, I'd say that that is a general explanation for normally healthy people. Clinical depression is another matter.

[giblets]

What? Are you saying I lack balls because I was unfortunate enough to be robbed 5 times? All the balls in the world won't protect you from a bullet, Australian.

See in America, we have guns. Our idea of a thug isn't a guy with a slouch hat who rides a wallaby.

Notice how in Crocodile Dundee, they tried to rob him with a little switchblade and Dundee pulled out a bigger knife and scared them off. That is Hollywood. In real life, people have guns.

I actually had a switchblade with a blade the length of my hand in my pocket during one of those robberies. The criminals just took my knife as well as my money (and my shirt).

What, you think Mariekerke is in Australia?

He was obviously responding to your comment about brain function. But I shouldn't be surprised that you got it wrong.

[Al B. Sure!]

Oh I could have sworn Dannubis was an Australian. Maybe I'm mixing him up with braindead. They both had spats with KH around the same time.

Then again, my brain mustn't function right because I got robbed 5 times? What does the functioning of your brain have to do with whether or not you get robbed?


And how should I know what Mariekerke is. According to Wikipedia, the Dutch municipality of that name doesn't even exist anymore and the town in Belgium doesn't even have a Wikipedia article for it so it's probably miniscule and unimportant. So you find my ignorance of the whereabouts of this Mariekerke laugh-worthy? Really?

[Jon Miller]

You would do well to give up on OCS and leave Philly and try for a real job...

JM

[giblets]

Why do you choose to live in an area with so much crime? Unless the robberies happened when you were a kid...

[Darius871]

choose

?

[KrazyHorse]

I'm a guy from the ghetto who grew up in an abusive single mother home. As a toddler in 1986-88, I lived in Lebanon. Fortunately, I was too young to have the horrors of war affect me much but I do remember the shelling.

I've been shot at and been robbed at gunpoint 5 times. I've out-ran two other attempted armed robberies. I know how it feels to have a gun at your head for several minutes while you wait for the timer on the safe at your job to count down. And then when you go to the police station, the cops are accusing you of doing an inside job.

I've always had to fight growing up. Fighting in school, fighting at my jobs, fighting in the street. I won't lie: I rarely won a fight and always finished bloodied regardless.

I've had two friends of mine murdered in cold blood. Rest in Peace Donte and Dominic.

List the litany of stuff you hear about growing up in the inner-city and I've been through a lot of it.

Always told that a college education was the key to success and to leave the ghetto so I worked hard at the city's best high school, even when my mother kicked me out of her apartment, benefited from her abuse by being able to declare as an independent student which allowed me to attend college. Worked two jobs while attending school and finished magna *** laude. Only really worked both jobs to support a ***** of a 'girlfriend' who ended up being a whore who treated me like **** for 5 years.

Three years after college, I'm still here. Still here with the bars on the windows to prevent a third break-in; still here knowing I am taking a risk if I step out at night; still here with the dealers down the street; still here with the young boys mean mugging me and testing me as I walk past them on the corner...

But **** it. I'm not depressed. I feel fine and confident. People have been through a lot worse so what I look like whining and stewing in my own self-pity? I'll get out of here soon enough. Hopefully by the end of August when I finish OCS and commission.


What's all this depression talk with you privileged folk? Man the **** up.

You're a joke

[Zoetstofzoetje]

You've been through hell and survived. In fact, you've thrived. Well done.You've accomplished more than a rich kid who used the inheritance to become even richer.

[KrazyHorse]

He's accomplished virtually nothing. He graduated from a mediocre university with a mediocre degree 3 years ago and has basically been sitting on his ass since. Feeding his sense of persecution and overstating the difficulty of attending and completing university merely affirms his sense that his continued failure to find work commensurate with his abilities is somebody else's fault rather than his own. Something like 30% of Americans in albie's age group have bachelor's degrees or higher educational attainment. It's not a particularly impressive feat.

Grow the **** up, albie.

[Asher]

A: For the same reason dogs are seldom depressed. They don't know any better.

[Al B. Sure!]

He's accomplished virtually nothing. He graduated from a mediocre university with a mediocre degree 3 years ago and has basically been sitting on his ass since. Feeding his sense of persecution and overstating the difficulty of attending and completing university merely affirms his sense that his continued failure to find work commensurate with his abilities is somebody else's fault rather than his own. Something like 30% of Americans in albie's age group have bachelor's degrees or higher educational attainment. It's not a particularly impressive feat.

Grow the **** up, albie.

HEY *******. WHAT PERCENTAGE OF AMERICANS WHERE I CAME FROM HAVE BACHELOR'S DEGREES?!

ANY RICH **** CAN GO TO COLLEGE

[KrazyHorse]

Where you come from is full of stupid people. If they weren't stupid they would move somewhere else, go to college and get a real job.

You have accomplished NOTHING yet. You've only done something that virtually anybody with modestly above-average intelligence could do (and in fact what virtually all such people ACTUALLY do)

Coming from a ****hole like philly is far less of an impediment than is being born stupid. You were given far more of a head start than some kid with an IQ of 90 born into a middle-class household with income 65k. You are wasting the talents you did nothing to earn.

[Tupac Shakur]

Besides, I'm the real ghetto success story on these boards.

[KrazyHorse]

Even you left the ghetto before you could become a success

[Provost Harrison]

Albert, you may not be depressed, but you could even go as far as being happy if you get out of that festering sh*thole and go and get a proper job! It is exactly the same reason I don't still live in Hull and moan about what an economic backwater Hull is.