Shadows and Clouds

I'm in a major funk.

I thought it was just writers' block, but over the past several days I've noticed the all-too-familiar grey veil of depression descend on my mood. It's something I have dealt with for several years, doing the textbook shuffle of "I can get through this. I don't need help. It'll pass. Blah blah" until finally reaching the point where if I didn't get some help from counselors and/or meds I could go several days of not getting out of bed. My college transcripts can attest to the battles of the past.

While I love to sleep, I think we can all agree that that type of lifestyle is not healthy nor productive to breaking the cycle of helplessness. Recently I've been feeling barraged with bad news and strife from all directions. At the family level my parents and I are sparring over my future career plans (a very long and complicated story). At the workplace there has been a tremendous amount of staff turnover without the accompanying hiring of people to handle the workload. And then there's the state/national/global level, which provides endless fodder for the down-in-the-dumps mood I find myself in today.

Before the sirens and alarms start going off, know that I have already scheduled an appointment to meet with my counselor and hopefully get some meds that will help me re-balance whatever skewing is going on in my brain. I couldn't take it anymore on Tuesday when I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin.

So why am I writing about it? I guess I needed to verbalize/literalize the conversation I've been engaging in via an endless loop in my head. I learned when I was very young that if I cowered and took the passive route to obstacles, that my virtual walls would do nothing to erase the core problems/threats I was facing. There's an inherent truth for me that hope can be sparked when I finally reach my breaking point and turn around and fight back.

I guess that's why I blog, aside from the mini-manifesto. There's so much outrage being done in my name, and while there are days like the ones I've been experiencing this week when I want to tell the world, "¡Vete al carajo!", there really are sane people left on this earth who share my disgust with the injustice, rampant poverty, and spread of war. By writing and spurring activism for myself and others, I can take some type of responsibility for turning the tide.

Enough rambling, just wanted to get this out there so I could move my mind to more productive subjects; like mourning the theft of Shamus.

[UPDATE] Thanks for your comments, everyone. I really appreciate them all. Just gonna follow the Eat4Today motto coined by katiebird and take it one day at a time. Paz.