I'm Going to Drink It Anyway

My milk is likely sour, but I wanted hot chocolate and so I had it. I'll be putting it in my coffee tomorrow too and I'm fairly confident I'll survive the experience. The best before date was December 30th, but I tend to just ignore those, as you can see.

So, it's perhaps become increasingly obvious that I'm sad. Quite sad, actually. I've certainly gone through similar periods in the past - the last one back when 2005 turned into 2006 - but in the past I have tended to stop blogging during them. After all, can't be much fun to read about me being less than perky. Way back when, my shtick was that I made my life into a series of humorous anecdotes, so when I was feeling sad there wasn't anything to say. Now I blog far more for myself than any audience that may be out there - it doesn't even need a purpose, I just blog because that has become something that I do.

So, I'm sad. It's been a rough holiday period on a number of counts and I have slowly found myself with little energy to deal with the sad. I keep trying to do the things I know are good for becoming less sad - I arrange social events and try and sit in the sun on lunch break and treat myself to good Indian food and all of those little things that are supposed to keep the sad at bay. It's working, though not as well as I'd like. All those social events are things I come to dread the moment I commit myself to them - already I am wondering if I could just skip out on both of the things I have planned for the weekend, for all that I was fairly instrumental in setting them up.

I've always been a person prone to sadness. Back in high school I used to sit around in my bedroom listening to the saddest music I could find, just so that I could sob while listening to it. As I have gotten older, I have found that the sad periods have decreased in length, intensity and recurrence, but they always seem to just be there, waiting for me. Oddly these days I feel the warring pulls of surrounding myself with tons of people (though I feel no less lonely) and hiding under my covers.

Reaching out when I am sad is something I find difficult to do. First off, I simultaneously don't want to talk about why I am sad and find myself unable to avoid doing so, because it's all I think about. I occasionally want to tell people I'm sad, but I don't really want my image as a tough person who makes a joke out of every difficult situation to suffer either.

Naturally, the lack of sleeping isn't helping. Again, this is something I can trace all the way back to my teen years. My father was partially right - it's a pattern and you can change it. However, I am quite a night owl by nature, so it's not an easy thing to change. Beyond which, the problem isn't that I don't get in my bed and turn off the lights, the problem is that sleep doesn't follow. Spending my days struggling to keep my eyes open isn't really helping anything.

Anyway, there it is. I'm sad and I'm off to try and fall asleep now.