Now that I've looped You Are Who You Hang Out With a couple times, I have realized that I very much neglected "Batman." Using a superhero hiding his identity to illustrate what it's like to feel as an infection to those you love, especially your friends, is a brilliant analogy I'm sure many of us can relate to. Brian's ability to turn unrelated concepts and pictures and characters into a symphony of meaning is inspiring to me. It always has me asking "what do all these things have in common?" and looping the songs until it finally hits me. This has become one of my favorite tracks on the Front Bottoms discography very quickly.
Back to the meaning of the song... I'm an extrovert, and my depression has begun to take my enjoyment of social interaction from me. It's a dark place when the thing that gives you energy and has made you feel alive all these years becomes an anxiety ridden task and people don't talk about it enough. It's hardest when you love your friends and you want to see them, but the voices try to convince you that they don't love you. They'll try to convince you that you're a poison to them. That they have forgotten you. That they didn't want you here to begin with, you were invited out of pity, and you should leave. Permanently.
If you feel this way, know you're not alone, and don't feel guilt for it. These feelings don't mean you hate your friends. They don't mean you need to isolate yourself to the point of dying of loneliness and live with your battery on empty. All it means is you are struggling. Things are hard for you... and you should surround yourself with people who will be understanding of that and help you fight it. People who reassure you that they love you. People who tell you how they feel about you often and in detail.
"Sure, I make plans. I make plans because I should want to go. I make plans because sometime I would have wanted to go, it's just not much fun having fun when you don't want to have fun, mom."
-Sabrina Benaim
(Explaining My Depression to My Mother)