Here’s my official warning – this post will be maudlin, boring and contain more information than you have any right to or interest in. If that bugs you, stop reading here and go play Farmville or something.

Still here? Well, you were warned.

Depression is a motherfucker. It’s something I’ve fought on and off ever since I was a teenager with far to much angst-ridden music and sharp implements for my own good. I haven’t cut myself in years, that’s something I put by the wayside in college, and there were never any serious attempts at offing myself, I have always had too much ego to want to deprive the world of my coolness, but it still creeps into my life a couple of times a year and disrupts otherwise pretty good times.

Take this week for example – I got a couple of expense reimbursements at work that I put toward credit card debt, got an unexpected chunk of money that further reduced debt, got good news regarding insurance fights about Suzy’s surgery that even further improved my fiscal outlook, wrote a well-received review for money, and have been doing pretty good at the day job.

But I haven’t written hardly anything all March, I’ve gotten a bitch of a cold/flu/allergy thing, have been exhausted mentally and physically after the rigors of the last couple of weeks, had a minor run-in with a boss that I snowballed into a huge thing in my own head even though he completely let it go after a few minutes, and slept for 11 hours last night after taking a sick day today and still managed to be exhausted four hours after I woke up.

I blame it on Daylight Savings Time. I’m not even kidding – every year about this time I get sick and depressed and it always hits right around the time that my country decides to arbitrarily fuck with the natural rhythms of the world. So I have to burn sick days to get my head straight and then get back to work even more underwater because this time I really AM overwhelmed.

Yes, I know it’s all in my head. I know my life is pretty good, all things considered. And with depression, that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. Oh yeah, and I’m completely self-diagnosed and unmedicated because I hate going to the doctor and I’m too fucking hardheaded to do anything other than deal with it for a couple weeks every year. I know, healthy, right?

At least I understand a little about what’s going on now and can try to mitigate the pain I inflict on others when I get this way. I try not to be too much of a dick to my wife or my employees, and try not to interact too much with other people until I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I’m self-aware enough to know that there will be light, and it will be soon, unless this becomes like the unfortunate period of Fall 2001/Winter 2002 where I was head-fucked for six months before I even realized it. But I don’t think it will be like that, because I can pretty much pinpoint the moment when the train went careening off the tracks, and I figured out that it was off the tracks a couple days ago, so that usually means I’ll be back to normal in a day or so.

And how’s your life been?

I don’t mean to make light. I know there are millions of people with depression, and most of them have it worse than me. And that it’s a constant struggle for a lot of people, and they can’t EVER get along without drugs, and I know what it’s like to sit in a dark room with REM playing in the background thinking that if everybody hurts, they can’t all hurt like this or they’d be FUCKING DEAD. But it’s not like that for me anymore. But it is still a real thing, so take a second and look a little harder at that guy or girl at work that’s been a little off his/her game this week. Maybe they just need somebody to say “hey! I give a shit.” Because they might not have Statcounter for their constant positive reinforcement, like I do.

Alright, oversharing mode is now set back to “off.” Feel free to return to your regularly scheduled program. I will work on returning to mine. Thanks.

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