Written under the Full Moon

Maybe it's a seasonal thing, but this time of year I usually find myself feeling a little low. Somewhere I read that there was a gap during this time of year where it is the longest interval between holidays...but I don't think that's it.

Last Friday fell around me like a heavy, black curtain. I woke up at 2:00 AM to the sounds of someone breaking into my car outside my bedroom window. I lay there, paralyzed and feeling helpless, wondering about the damage I would find the next morning--I had left some things in the back of the car that belonged to my company, and it would require a lot of explaining when they were gone.

It turns out that my mind had assembled the tinks and gongs of the night and created a story--somehow the worst case scenario--and a sense of inevitable dread set in and reinforced my greatest fears. I didn't even feel better when I discovered that I was completely wrong, and that my car was just fine when I went out to check after the sun had come up. Somehow, I guess I knew I was wrong, and the fact that I had conjured up such a negative image out of raw materials just made me feel worse. What the hell is wrong with me to be so negative?

I'm usually the guy who wears a smile and soldiers on when everyone around me is jumping off the bow of the ship. But, I've got this threshold which, when I wear down below it, I just can't rise above it and keep smiling. I can't even rationalize my way out of it--you know, look at things and say "Hey, you're a lucky guy! You're lucky to be alive/walking/successful/married/a father..." It all serves to make me feel like an ungrateful wretch on top of the underlying negative feelings.

I resigned myself to move slowly through the day and maybe just get one thing right. That's another funny thing about being depressed. If you just carry on, you're just doing the same depressing shit that made you feel that way to begin with. In this case, there are about five situations at my job which are pushing me off the ledge (figuratively, in case you are starting to really worry about me). These are things like--not putting the cover on my TPS report and getting totally reamed by some out-of-touch beauracrat, having to stand up and take responsibility for other people's failure to act diligently (times about four separate situations), and, in general, feeling like I'm "on my own" in trying to do a good job without proper backing. After a while, it gets lonely out there and then I started to doubt if I am doing a good job...Have I ever done a good job, or did I just get lucky at times? Did I just get old and burned out and now I just suck?

Another funny thing about depression is that it is the type of thing that is polite to keep to yourself. Telling someone about it is embarassing and weak. Seriously, I don't want help when I get down like this. I don't want to be cheered up. I want to indulge myself in being pissed at the world.

I wandered to my sink and decided to shave with my shaving brush and mug with warm shaving soap. The primitive implements were a little indulgence that I requested for Christmas, and it cheers me up a little--My normal day has me shaving in the rear-view mirror of my car as I drive for about 2 hours per day in the course of my job. And as I stand there, I think about how I wish I wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's. I love Holly Golightly--she's one of my favorite characters, because she is random and light and hilarious and witty and disorganized and charming. The book consists of the author and Holly, two totally different perspectives which coexist and contrast each other perfectly and come together and separate again with no resolution. That's the way things are in the real world.

It occurs to me to mirror the book in some way with a story of my own, but I get tired of thinking about it right away and dismiss the idea. I reach for the hardback edition and find a note written by a co-worker, years ago. She loved to read like me, and we compared reading lists. I don't know why I look down my nose at people when they rattle off Stephen King and Sidney Sheldon as some of their favorite authors--I sheepishly offer up Hemingway and Faulkner and decide not to mention Shakespeare. I loaned her my copy of Breakfast at Tiffany's and she wrote out a page of observations and commentary which struck me enough to hang on to it. I flicked the edge of her note and didn't open it--I already know what it says even though I haven't read it for at least four years.

I pour another half cup of coffee and start to talk to my wife--she,bristled, practically imperceptively, at my negativism, and I just closed up and let it go rather than inflict it upon her and ruin her day. I drove off to work, and eventually the smile that was camoflauging my broken spirit diffused through me and brought me around to a feeling of normal.

That was last Friday, and here we are a week later. Today might have been the first day where I woke up happy since then; the first time I felt a sense of peace. It scares me that I can just sink so low irrationally, even though it is such a rare occurrance. I just let myself feel the lows that come with the good times, and remember the details. And write them out.