Have you ever noticed that when you get cruising along real good, and everything seems to be doing great, and you look around and go “Life is good”, that’s a cue for Old Man Murphy to throw a giant monkey wrench into the works?

     Or in this case, a million teeny, tiny monkey wrenches.

     Maybe more like sugar in the gas tank.  Actually, that’s exactly how I feel today.  Like for the last three weeks or so, I’ve had sugar in my gas tank.

     The moods of people around me, ranging from low-grade depression, to surliness, to gripping, shaking, guilt-and-pain-induced emotional infarctions, are beginning to wear away at my personal SEP field that keeps me generally insulated from OPS.

     For the TLA impaired, that’s “Somebody Else’s Problem”, and “Other People’s Shit”.

     Not that I don’t care.  I do.  And I like to help any way I can, but generally, other people’s moods and other people’s problems don’t really bother me personally.  It wasn’t always like that.  I used to be a big huge empathic sponge…feeling everything that others around me felt…with no sense of boundaries.  A good friend once told me “Empathy is your super-power”.  As super-powers go, I’ve got to say….it sux.  I had to go and get myself a big Cyclops-style buffer to shut it off, dampen, direct it, or the destruction would be massive.  Given my choice, I’d rather be Wolverine, because there’s nothing cooler than a berserker who can take nearly unlimited amounts of damage.  Or Storm, just because I admire her ability to be a huge, conceited bitch.  Or my personal favorite…Nightcrawler, because he’s just the sweetest, nicest, most adorable creepy circus freak ever.  Hell, I’d even be Jean Grey, because if I had to feel other people’s pain still, I’d at least also be able to stop tsunamis with my brain, and that’s SOMETHING.

     Fortunately, we an intelligent, adaptable species, and any coping mechanisms we are not born with, we can manufacture…or I would have sawed my wrists open with a nail file some years ago.

     Then there’s the stuff I haven’t been handling due to my own low-energy emotional ebb.  Not depression so much as just not wanting to get up in the morning…not wanting to stay awake, not wanting to…move.

     And then there is the stuff I thought I was handling, that it has recently become obvious I’m not handling well enough…

     And the stuff I agreed to because it was a long way off, and I didn’t have anything else going on and now it’s here, and lo and behold, I’ve got a huge crap pile that feels like it’s threatening to tip over on me.

     At least that’s how it feels today, but it’s better than it felt yesterday, and the day before that.

     I’m almost out of the woods.  Today is D-day.

     When I get into bed tonight, it will all be over, and tomorrow will be a brand new day.  I can start taking up some of the slack that’s been playing out over the last month or so.

     That’s the neat thing about bad moods, they always pass.

     The best and most effective way I’ve found of dealing with depressive episodes is to just put my head down and do what needs to be done, and keep muddling through the best I can until it passes.

     Of course, during the seven years when I thought I was depressed, but really suffering from untreated hypothyroidism, that wasn’t as constructive as say, going to the doctor and saying “fix me”.

     But generally, that’s the best advice I can give myself when times like these happen.

     I’ll leave you with some lyrics on the topic from “The Crow” soundtrack.

“It can’t rain all the time,

 The sky can’t fall forever

 And though the night seems long

 Your tears won’t fall, your tears won’t fall

 Your tears won’t fall…forever.”