The most dreaded question: "How are you?"

"How are you?"

"How's life?"

"How've you been?"

"But really, how've you been lately?"

I hate it when people ask me those questions. I mean, I don't hate them for asking those questions, it's more like I hate answering those questions. Why? Because I don't know myself. If life's going well, then yeah, life's good. I'll end the conversation at that. But no, I usually don't know how my life is going, my standard answer would always be "Good! ..I guess" or "Fine. I guess" or "Umm..pretty good?" Or something along those lines. On the other hand, when things aren't going to well, I'd say "Alright...not great but yeah I'm not gonna tell you about my problems and how depressed I am right now cause I'm not that close to you and I suck at expressing myself anyway so yeah".

And how do people usually respond to my answers? "Okaay...you don't seem too happy". But what am I supposed to say? I don't even know, lol. Sometimes I don't want to sound like an idiot, so I just make something up. Like "Oh good, went on a road trip last weekend. Had a blast, mate" and yeah the subject usually shifts towards another direction after that.

But really, how do you guys even answer those questions? Do you really mean what you say? Cause I definitely don't. Most times anyway...