Some Kind of Record

It is February fifth and I am not mired in the Deep Beiges.

Yes, you read that right.

Don't get me wrong, I still have a case of the blahs - the same case that dogs me constantly - and every now and then it dips down into the Beiges, and even the Deep Beiges, but I am not neck deep in it like I would usually be this time of year.

They usually start creeping up on me in December, hover around mid-level through January, and whomp me upside the head at the Beginning of February.  With luck, they abate in mid-March but have been known to linger well into May.

I have every reason to be sunk in the swamp right now.  Self worth?  Zip.  Self confidence?  Zero.  Self image?  Nada.  Self loathing?  In spades!  I live with (well...kinda...live near, mostly, and sometimes with in an I'm-just-visiting kind of way), and love, an abusive addict who is sliding down the slippery slope into paranoia and self hatred as if the path was greased.  I can't manage to keep any part of Casa de Crazy clean for more than a few minutes.  Some parts, in fact, haven't been clean in years.  I am constantly cleaning up vomit, feces, or urine.  No kidding.  Several times a day, one of the denizens will deposit something somewhere - kids, cats, adults, everyone is playing the game of What Noxious Effluvia Can I Leave Where?, and I'm the one who gets to find it.  Sometime I don't find it until a day or two later, because I don't always hear the event in question.  I sometimes wonder if I am in training for my next life, when surely I will come back as a dung beetle.

I caught myself reflecting on what I've been feeling lately, which is less a deep and abiding depression and more a sort of general blues with the occasional foray into Holy Crap I'm Frelling Miserable!  Funny how something as simple as brain chemistry can rock one's world.  I have been up at the cabin, house sitting for Mum.  The kids are with me, which makes it difficult to find a moment for quiet introspection, but luckily I am a master of multi-tasking, so I can examine my navel AND yell at the fractious children.

I realize that my patience is not at a minimum.  It is worn slap out.  My anger is somewhere between a slow simmer and a conflagration, and I just never know from one moment to the next what it's going to be - as much as the people around me, I am along for the ride.  Yes, I have many coping mechanisms for depression and anger and all the other things on my variety plate, but right now those coping mechanisms are not terribly effective.  As in, non-starters.

Maybe the anger is burning some of the depression off?

The next few weeks will be unpleasant on the inside.  I can feel the pause that come just before the drop, like being in the front car on the roller-coaster just as it hesitates at the apex of the highest hill.  There is something of the same sort of dreadful anticipation, too.  I know I'll live through it, and with any luck I'll be able to rush through it and charge up the next hill without lingering at the lowest point.

Meanwhile, there is cleaning to do, and possibly some quilting, and if I can't cure me, I can at least distract me.