Inquisitive do-gooders

I am not as mysterious and opaque as I imagine I am. Well, maybe mysterious. But my coworkers quizzed me today about my mood. They'd noted a distinct lack of "me" lately. Which I take to mean my sardonic, cogent and insightful banter has been less couched in witticisms and bon mots of late.

Yeah, well there's nothing like a good case of anhedonia to bring a mood down.

It's hard enough to feign caring with clients who need some clinical help (versus those who are merely using up oxygen and hastening the Universe's headlong dash into it's ultimate entropic state... which since nothing changes at that point, can it truly be called an end?) let alone muster my dwindling resources to get all rallied up for the manufactured crisis looming just across the horizon; moving offices and divvying resources.

Ye gods... we are professionals. Let's not cry over which figurines get put in which play therapy room. Really. I kid you not. I couldn't give a shit and if your clients can't cope with that sort of change, there's some serious shit that needs to be addressed. And I for one do not have the energy to friggin help you manage your fragile, sad, nervous, whiny pathology.

So when they ask me what's up? I shrug, roll my eyes and try to decide how real to be with these people.

I have little reason to be depressed. I have a job... it's an ok-ish job. It has the plus of being a job anyhow. Bills are being met, more or less on time. Some money is being saved to replace the rapidly disintegrating couches. I can put fuel in my bike... yeah, and yet, there it is; depression.

And not the fun kind of melancholia either. Navel gazing and sophomoric philosophizing Byronic moodiness this is not. This be full on righteous despairing of purpose against the corrosive weight of time... mmmm, tasty.

I wonder at times which came first; my existentialist angst or depression. Is the ADD genius confined by the realities of the interstitial existence and the inherent limitations of biology (hence the ADD) and that feeds the depression? Or does depression arise from some ineffable quality that is itself then expressed ADD-ishly thus creating a wicked feedback loop of frustrations vs accomplishments?

I see my daughter struggle with school. Not with learning, with the crap of school, of conforming to that regimen and how she does not fit. Lord knows they will not do shit to help it fit her... Sorry, teachers, public schools are not the place for the odd kids. Not your fault. You've got to help the middle of the bell curve. Get a standard deviation away and there's gunna be trouble. On the low side, there's tons of help. On the 'gifted' side there's... more stuff to do, but only if you can organize yourself and haven't already been crushed into ennui by the inevitable "Teacher Who Just Doesn't Get It"... we've all run into them.

Mr. Assenheimer... Mr. Maybower... Yeah, I'm talking to you. Failed me in freshman English and totally messed up my chances at having Algebra make sense...

Eat it! I've got 2 Master's degrees... assholes.

I see these things and I despair.

I try not to.

But I do.

I think I hide it well.

But I don't.

And inquisitive do-gooders notice and ask how I'm doing. And I have to decide how real to be with them.

Some days I'm more real.

Some days I shrug and hope my ride home sweeps some of the weight away. For at least a little while.