Recently, daisies wrote about a good mood she was in. And I was jealous.

Also, for whatever related or unrelated reason, I felt good. Really good, smiling humming dancing about my cubicle good. I don’t take these good days for granted anymore ~ they are like little jewels in my life, these days that are absent of pain and so today on my 50th day, I got my goof on and it felt darn good.

My life isn’t all bad, I have very few real problems to complain about, but I haven’t felt the way she describes in far too long. I’ve been tired, I’ve been grumpy, and I’ve been unable to enjoy the good things in my life.

You may have noticed an air of complaint around here lately. I can’t seem to write anymore without grumbling about something or other—this hurts, that hurts, she’s annoying, I hate him, boo hoo my life sucks. And this blog doesn’t reveal the reality of how bitchy and moany I am in real life. All I do is see the bad in everything; I let every little thing squash me down until I can no longer even smile.

Yes I realize complaining about complaining is regressive, but I need to work this out somewhere. Move along if you hate complainers.

Things are building up in my life that I don’t have the capacity to handle. I wasn’t born with the rock solid composure of my mom and so many others I know. My shoulders can’t bear the weight of so many burdens. I’ve never dealt with real tragedy, and I hope I never have to, and perhaps I’d develop the strength I’d need in such a situation. But as it is, I like my life to remain placid and smooth. Easy to understand, comprehend, maneuver.

That’s not to say I don’t like change. I love change, thrive on it actually. But something about my current circumstances—so much unsurity, so much potential for change, so much happening at once—overwhelms me and causes my brain and emotions to shut down.

Along with all the unsurity and potential for change, there’s the fact that I’m just not very happy in my current situation. I’m actually craving something different because other than living and being with Brad, there’s not a whole lot I love about where I am in life right now. However, it’s the figuring out what changes to make that cause the short circuit in my head, and I stall, I sit still and do nothing. And I complain.

Plus, on top of all of that, one thing after another keeps happening that needs my immediate attention, time and money, so all my resources are sucked into dealing with RIGHT NOW! and I have none left over for anything else.

Like I said… my shoulders aren’t strong enough. Neither is my brain.

I’d like to think it’s just the weather. I drive to work under grey skies in the morning and drive home in the near dark at night. I rarely see sunlight anymore. I stay inside as much as possible to avoid the cold, and it’s only going to get worse over the next four long months. Winter sucks the energy right out of me and fills the void with sadness, fatigue and something heavy and dark that weighs me down until I no longer know how to make myself happy.

But it’s more than the weather. It is the weather—winter and everyone who says they love it—but it’s everything else to. Everything that has invaded my life and gotten stuck together, creating a giant messy wad of crud that I can’t even make sense of anymore.

I was driving home last night, taking note of my bad mood, and, inspired by daisies’ cubicle dancing, decided to pull myself out of it. I turned on my favorite Christmas music and tried to sing along.

It was so artificial. A smile and a song could not erase or even mask the heavy greyness I feel. It was like trying to put out a house fire with a child’s squirt gun.

I felt like such a sham. Here I am with this great life, so much to be thankful for, so much to love and be loved by, and all I can see is the bad. All I can do is complain and give up on everything because I just can’t deal. And even though I can see through the overwhelming grey and I know I should be happy and I want to be, I can’t even make myself do that. I know it’s possible to “turn that frown upside down,” take a minute to count my blessings, and find the energy to be happy. People do it all the time. But my attempt felt like such a lie. I told myself I had good things, I was strong and capable, I was happy… but I knew it was all fake.

After my artificial attempt to cover up the grey, I pulled into my carport and my brakes locked and wouldn’t unlock. Now my car is broken again, for the second time in a month, and I have no idea how to fix it. I’m so bogged down that my brain can’t even begin to process how I’m going to solve this problem. What I want to do is not deal with it—crawl into bed and sleep until the world no longer needs cars. I want to tell my boss that I don’t have a car so I can’t come to work anymore and I have to quit. I want to NOT deal with this…if only that were an option.

Brad said the most beautiful thing to me last night. He saw how incapable I was of dealing with this right now, he probably heard my brain physically shut down and saw my eyes glaze over when I tried to think. And even though he’s stressed and tired and sick himself, he said:

“Honey, you just get through the day. I’ll deal with all your burdens. Because I can and I don’t mind.”

I know we’re a team and he depends on me for many things too, but I wonder if it’s unhealthy to lean on him so much. Somewhere inside of me I have the strength to deal with everything, but with Brad in my life I don’t have to. And sometimes I want to just let go completely, I want to stop holding it together and ask him to handle my life for awhile because it feels like too much. It’s really not, I’m just a complainer I know, but sometimes I want to just give up. Not on life, but on dealing with life.

I’ve become something I don’t like very much. I’m tired all the time; I have no energy and no motivation; even though I like my job, I dread going every day; I don’t even like to have plans anymore; I don’t enjoy much of anything; I’m overwhelmed, but for no real good reason.

Mostly I’m sick of complaining. I’m sick of always feeling the bad things and nothing else. Instead of noticing anything good, I just complain, complain, complain. I tell myself to stop because I know how annoying I am, especially to Brad who has to hear it all, and even to myself. I annoy myself with how annoyed I am, but I can’t stop! About something last night—who knows what, it could have been anything—I said “God this is the most annoying thing in my life right now!” and Brad retorted with “You seem to have a lot of ‘most annoying’ things lately.”

He’s right, and I know it. Everything is annoying. EVERYTHING! Even things that could be good get twisted in my mind and come out of my mouth as SO ANNOYING! They stack up higher and higher until they topple over and I’ve got a big mess that I can’t clean up. Not only have I forgotten how to clean up messes, but I don’t have the proper tools to do it even if I knew how. So the mess stays and keeps getting messier, and I become less and less capable of cleaning it up and more and more overwhelmed by it all.

I’m covered in a messy greyness that’s weighing me down, and I want so badly to figure it all out and make it go away, but I don’t know how and I can’t, so I don’t. I want to remember how to be happy, I want to be cheerful again damn it!, but I can’t even fake it convincingly, let alone make it real. So here I am, writing about it in this nonsensical way, and nothing proactive is being done.

It seems that’s all I can manage to do right now.

(If you’ve made it through all this, congratulations on your patience, and thank you for “listening” to me. Vibes of good cheer are welcome.)