Robert Manners

I Laughed, I Cried...

In the interest of enteraining the passersby before I start unburdening my besiegèd bosom, I'm going to start the post with a beefcake, instead of ending with it:

And now on to the moaning and wailing and gnashing of teeth...



When last I wrote, I was of the opinion that I was due to come out of my funk at any moment. And events conspired to give me the false impression that it had passed. But, unfortunately, it hadn't...instead, I seem to have become rather manic. Instead of plain old down-in-the-dumps depression, I get to experience the joys of up-and-down rollercoaster mania. Yippee.



Last Friday, I went out shopping and bought all sorts of new jewelry. It was ever so much fun! There's nothing for improving a mood like buying jewelry. I also wrote a fun blog over at the Galaxy Girls' site. And assembled a newsletter. And had a nice dinner with Caroline. And so on and so forth. A great day, all in all. I forgot to do the Friday Five, though...oops! There's always something I forget on Fridays.



On Saturday I did a spot of housework before getting into the car and heading down to Ivanhoe, CA, to pick up my Grandmother at her nephew's house. It's a four-hour drive, mostly on Highways 5 and 99 (two of the most boring roads in California), which I usually loathe...and I was alone in the car, which I also usually loathe. But for some reason I had a hell of a great time! I felt really truly happy. I had a new CD player (I decided to go for the gusto this time and got something worth stealing, a bright-red Sony), and found myself singing along with Ella and Keely at full voice as I flew down the straight, relatively uncrowded roads, flanked with gorgeous flowering fruit orchards and surrounded by rolling green hills and vast green fields.



On arrival at Lee & Beverly's house, my mood continued benevolent as I chatted with the Grandmother and my cousins, and later when watching two rather western-themed movies (Brad Pitt & Julia Roberts in The Mexican, a very strange film with very overdone acting, which I nevertheless viewed with an indulgent eye; and Clint Eastwood and a cast of standards in some bleak piece of junk set in New Mexico called Joe Kidd, which didn't make any sense and had the biggest structural flaws I've ever witnessed in a plot, but which for some reason I enjoyed). Then the drive back home, though not as ebullient as the drive down, was generally quite pleasant.



And then I had to come back to work...and I wish now that I hadn't. I guess I can say it now, in all honesty: I Hate My Job. Now I am just like most people, as job-hating is more an American Pastime than baseball or getting worked up about sex. But I used to really love this job, so that admission cost me a lot. Monday I didn't get much of anything done, as I was busy hiding my head in the sand (or, more exactly, in eBay) while all hell broke loose around me. On Tuesday things were less evil, but certain things happened for which I was ill-prepared and which either got under my skin or hurt my feelings. But, like on Monday, the downs of the day were balanced out somewhat by my shopping (I got the most gorgeous dress ever! Though it has to be altered before I can wear it...too tight in the shoulders...anybody know a good cheap seamstress?)



And now today, I had a really hard time dragging myself into the office (like last Monday, I woke up with all my muscles tied in knots). And once here, I pretty much spent most of the morning crying. Now, crying isn't something I do very often, and usually only in cases of extreme emotional overload. Today I am just a wreck, and every little thing is just tearing right though my heart like a buzz-saw. And making it all worse, I feel like I'm not doing my job properly. This depression thing sucks really hard. I think the time is coming, sooner than I had hoped, that I will have to be medicated. But to do that, I will have to go into therapy, and to go into therapy will cost a lot more money than my jewelry habit, and then the medication will be awfully expensive since I don't have any group health insurance (another reason to hate my job). It's an unpleasant bind.



But I am going to hold on to the hope that this depression will go soon, that this severe funk I'm in is just the darkest-before-the-dawn low-point, and the whole thing will pass along its merry way leaving me not too much the worse for wear. In the meantime, I am going to utilize all of the emotional outlets I have at my disposal...this website, for one; my friends (though I tend to avoid friends when I'm down, as I don't like to burden people with my negative moments); and the remainder of my finances (the Vintage Fashion Expo is coming up this weekend, and I intend to break the bank on yummy and glamorous accessories).



Well, thanks for listening, my darling reader! As a reward and a palate-cleanser, have another plateful of masculine pulchritude: