Suffering from depression? Great!

1. Read through high school yearbooks — especially the places where friends wrote you personalized messages about just how far you were destined to go in life. Follow that with a good cry as you clip your name tag onto your brightly colored cotton polyester work uniform.
2. Lie in bed, listen to songs by The Hollies and reminisce over relationships that didn’t work out by reading the stash of love letters you still hide under your mattress. Quickly hide the letters when your shrew of a wife comes home and demands you stop dicking around and get dressed so the two of you can go to her ex-boyfriend’s funeral where she will publicly wallow in mourning.
3. Go through your cell phone and delete the numbers from friends you’ve lost touch with. Stare blankly at the two remaining numbers left in your phone’s address book before remembering your parents passed away last fall and their numbers should probably be deleted too.
4. Stare at your face in the mirror for three hours and mark the different ways the years have robbed you of your potential and poured your childhood dreams down the drain — but then remember your dreams can’t fit down the drain because it’s clogged with the hair that has fallen out of your head.
5. Slowly work your way to the bottom of a can of baked beans while you watch episodes of Family Matters from the complete series collection you bought using the insurance money you were given when your only child was crushed by a runaway horse at the rodeo. Wipe away the bean juice from your face that was left when you wiped away the tears that came moments earlier.
6. Clean out and organize your razor blade drawer.
7. Spend an hour staring blankly at the open iTunes window on your laptop as you attempt to make a mix CD. Work your way slowly through the paralyzing realization that no song by The Cure quite summarizes just how sad you are feeling right now.
8. Go through Facebook and look at how successful everybody you hated from high school has become.
9. Passively aggressively comment on your successful high school “friends”’ Facebook photos — remarking on how fat their children look and inquiring whether or not they’ve been diagnosed with child-onset diabetes yet. Then spend the next several minutes hurriedly erasing the comments — not wanting to come off as an asshole months before the 20th high school reunion but not realizing that Facebook has already sent an e-mail alerting your friend of your comment.
10. Sit in the corner of the room, wrapped in a Snuggie and wondering where all your childhood toys are now.
11. Drink your way through a bottle of wine given to you by your boss three weeks before you were laid off and count just how many pills come in a bottle of sleeping pills.
12. Google the names of the people who were hired for the dream job you once applied for but didn’t receive. When you discover their blog, take special note of the entry where they post just how much they hate their job and how it’s only a stepping stone in their planned career.
13. Visit the zoo alone on a Saturday morning and sit on a park bench eating pre-packaged nachos and drinking a liter of cola while you watch the surrounding families blissfully run from cage to cage. Shed a single tear as a mother glances you out of the corner of her eye and tightly pulls her child in closer — fearful that you may be a deadlier predator than any locked in a cage.
14. Give the inside of your oven a through cleaning.
15. Spend three hours sitting on a plastic chair in the layaway section of an inner-city Wal-Mart the week before Christmas. Listen carefully to the cries of children who will wake up to a roll of socks and a halved chocolate bar under their Christmas tree.
16. Count your good-fortune … and then count the good-fortune of your one neighbor down the street who has a pool, a personal humidor and is married to the weather girl from channel 37.
17. Walk through a nursing home on a Tuesday afternoon and stare into the pleading eyes of the elderly as they ask you to help them find the last, vanished segment in the 1000-piece puzzle they’ve just spent the last month of their life working on. As you leave, visit the orderly station where a puzzle piece is framed on the office wall — a trophy to the eternal victory of the young over the old.
18. Watch the big-screen adaptation of The Little Rascals and wonder to yourself just how many of the child actors are now trapped in loveless relationships or have overdosed on drugs. IMDB them to discover most of them ares still now far more successful, richer and attractive than you are.
19. Visit any comic book store and watch as a shopkeeper struggles to maintain a pleasant demeanor as he plays video games and lords over the children who visit his shop regularly but lack the money to actually buy anything — all distractions meant to keep his mind off of the crippling debt that threatens to bankrupt him.
20. Come up with a list of twenty really depressing things not to do when you’re suffering from crippling depression.

Read more of the insane crap that comes from my head

It’s October and that means it’s time for another Saw movie. This weekend, the fifth film in the ultra-violent torture-porn franchise is released in theaters — giving horror junkies an excuse to roll out of bed, shuffle past their vintage Faces of Death movie poster, pop a Monster Magnet cassette into the tape deck in their parent’s station wagon and head to the local theater in search of some blood and guts on the big screen.

The Saw movies as a whole might be an epic dissertation into the horrors of man’s soul, but I stopped watching after the second film, unable to get past the horrible acting and general misanthropic attitude — two things I got my fill of in high school.

It’s not coincidental, then, that the average audience member of a Saw film is more often then not barely able to grow peach fuzz on his chin. Unaware of the horrors of real, everyday life, the films’ teenaged disciples cling to the teachings of Jigsaw, the franchise’s murderous anti-hero, as hard as they cling to their belief that shopping at Hot Topic is edgy.

If Saw V isn’t worth the price of a ticket, though, how should those in need of a good scare get their blood pumping? Try these “horror” movies on for size.

* Requiem for a Dream — Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel of drug addiction is the perfect cure for a good day. The film, which chronicles the downfall of four different addicts, will leave audiences in need of a cold shower and a phone call from their mother. Lives are ruined and dreams shattered. Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly star as people whose addiction to drugs leads to the some of the worst possible outcomes imaginable.

* Happiness — Writer/Director Todd Solondz is a sick, sick man. Watching Happiness, his anthology of depravity, is an experience akin to spending the weekend with that creepy uncle of yours who always is inviting you to wrestle him, even though all he has on is boxer shorts. Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker and Lara Flynn Boyle star as three deviants whose lives intersect. Baker’s character, a father who also is a pedophile, in particular has some of the most cringe-worthy scenes in celluloid history. I promise nobody will be able to sit still in their seats without flinching as Baker’s character explains to his son what being a pedophile means.

* Kids — Larry Clark’s 1995 exploration into urban youth is an eye-opener guaranteed to make viewers queasy. Staring a collection of mostly authentic children actors (including then-unkown Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson), the movie follows an HIV-positive teenage boy as he sets out to have sex with as many virgins as possible. Teenagers, if you thought your parents were tough before, let them watch this film and they will lock you in a dungeon until you are 33 years old.

Robert Saucedo warns those attempting a marathon of these three movies they they should stock up on hugs from teddy bears. Follow him on twitter @robsaucedo2500.

I wish I was an emoticon.

As a teenager, I was even scored lower in a summer job review because of the fact that I wore a frown more often then a grin.

My aversion towards saying “cheese” is not intentional, though. I do not choose to go through life with a furrowed brow and a grimace. That’s just the way my face naturally rests. Unless I am actively commanding myself to smile or grin, my mouth instinctively turns downward and my expression hardens. It’s an autonomic behavior that more often then not leaves me looking like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Atlas, though, I am not.

While I struggled with my fair share of depression in my youth — and what teenager doesn’t? — I currently consider myself a pretty happy guy. When I’m not getting into car accidents, living in rat hole apartments or having hallucinatory headaches, that is.

My job is good. I have some solid friendships. My relationship with my family is top-notch. Throw in some good tunes and I’m practically beaming with contentment — on the inside. On the outside, I look like I’m about to mug somebody.

I really do try to throw on a smile every now and then. As I go through the day, I’ll periodically remind myself to grin at the world —creeping out, perhaps, the people around me with an out-of-nowhere smirk.

They say it takes more muscles to frown then it does to smile but, for me, it takes less work. If my mind is racing and I have enough items on my plate, I’ll forget to remind myself that it’s smile time and soon enough I’ll go back to my natural worried expression.

I think my reflex-induced frowning can be traced back to high school.

As part of an effort to impress my classmates, I sought to create and nurture a persona for myself. Since I was not the athletic one or the smart one, I thought I would try my hand at being the deep one.

I bought some black t-shirts (not enough to look like one of those lame goth kids, though — even I had my standards) and I spent my days in the classroom looking pensive and remorseful – as if I were covering up some dark and secret past.

Instead of becoming my school’s version of a “Twilight” vampire, though, I found myself adopting my own made-up persona a bit too well.

Soon, my attempts to affect a depressed, sullen persona actually led to me becoming a depressed, sullen teenager. The bright and chipper Robert that had scampered through the halls of junior high was replaced by the mope who hung his head while shuffling through the halls of high school. I was such a dork.

Unfortunately, I didn’t put any stock into the old wives’ tale about making faces. Unfortunate because now, even as a reasonably well-adjusted adult, I find myself still slipping into the facial patterns of a teenage goth-lite douche bag.

If it takes work to smile, though, I’m willing to put in the effort just so I don’t catch myself in the mirror and become reminded of what a pitty-party I used to be in high school.

I’ll plaster on a Chesire Cat grin, throw some sparkles in my eyes and walk around looking like I escaped a television Christmas special if it means separating who I’ve become from who I used to be.

Queue Mr. Big’s “To Be With You.”

I am walking alongside the creek.

It’s not as much a creek as it is a depression in the dirt used to protect an irrigation pipe. Even still, it’s my creek.

As I walk, I fiddle with my CD player — thumping my fingers against the underside of the machine. The player has been on the verge of dying for almost an hour. Even though I have grown tired of the CD that I brought with me on my walk, I believe that the heavy silence that comes without music would be much worse.

The sun beats down and I wipe the sweat off my skin. I can feel a zit forming on my forehead and I continue to walk down the non-creek that is nevertheless a creek.

I listen to the CD for a few more minutes before my player finally, irrevocably dies. It had died five times before. I resurrected it each time by taking out the batteries and switching them around; flipping poles and playing god. Bringing my CD player back to life did not make the music any better.

This time, though, the batteries are completely depleted. I take the headphones off my head and hang them around my neck.

I walk with my eyes pointed at the ground, staring at my dust-covered boots, trying to remember when I first learned to tie my shoes. The memory is lost, though, buried underneath the memories of her.

Her: the unrequited love.

What a cliché.

I look down at my shoes and try to remember my childhood but all I can think about is her laughter. All I can picture is her face, smiling at me, teasing me with knowledge that I will never know. I remember all of these things yet I cannot remember the name of my kindergarten teacher. In the back and forefront of my brain, she lurks. She is everywhere. Her hair shimmers with the florescent lights of the grade school classroom.

“What are you thinking about,” she asks.

“I’m thinking about you,” I tell her.

“Oh” is her only reply.

With that she disappears.

I look over my shoulder and spot a jackrabbit that has emerged from the non-creek. A dog that had been sniffing at a nearby dumpster also spots the rabbit and begins the Chase.

Will the dog eat the rabbit when the Chase is over? Will the dog end the Chase just like that or will he let the rabbit escape so that he may dream about future Chases. What can there possibly be left after the Chase is over? Does the dog desire the rabbit or does he just want the Chase?

Am I in love with the Chase or am I in love with her?

What would happen if she says yes? Will I take her in my arms and look into her eyes and will the music swell and the credits roll. No. What will follow will be much more uncertain, much more frightening.

I will probably call her every night, sharing more and more of myself until she truly knows me. But then, once she knows me, how could she ever want me. Or worse; what if I get to know her and no longer want her? When it is just the two of us, no longer strangers to one another and no longer in love with each other, what then? Will the Chase have justified the end?

The dog looked as if it was smiling as it chased the rabbit. It was probably out of breath. I don’t smile much anymore. I claim I am deep in thought and merely forget to smile. The truth is, I don’t believe in smiling anymore. After the Chase I will smile. Right now I am out of breath and I can’t smile.

“What are you thinking about,” she asks.

“I’m thinking about the Chase,” I tell her.

“Oh” is her only reply.

With that she disappears.

I am alone and I am walking alongside the creek that is and isn’t a creek, desperately trying to revive my CD player and hoping to get to those last remnants of energy that I know must still live in the batteries. I was right — the silence is much, much worse.

As I fumble with the batteries, I feel a pang in my chest, a spasm of desire. In this Chase, I realize, I am not the dog. I am the rabbit and I am being pursued by the ghost of what could be.

I am tired of running and I will tell her how I feel.

I am walking alongside the creek that is not a creek and she asks me what I am thinking.

I tell her I love her.

“Oh” is her only reply.

She does not disappear.

I don’t know what happens now.

Read more stuff I wrote during high school