Flayed

I may have mentioned this before, but my short term memory isn't what it never was so if this starts to sound familiar you can check out and come back on the next installment.

I'm finding out that one of the hard things about depression is that when the drugs and the therapy, and the numerous little tricks you do during the day to keep your mind level start working and the depression starts to lift, your emotional state picks right back up where it left off. And it never seems to coincide nicely with whatever is going on, life-wise, right at this moment.

An Example:

I work. With computers. At a truly grueling, demanding, ball-busting, thankless job. It's not the work that's so bad; I actually love the work. It's the fact that the work usually only gets noticed when there's something goes wrong. Or that your average user or manager or CEO doesn't understand how complicated a system is, and therefore asks for or promises to, a system or to someone a completion date that goes beyond unreasonable and into fantasy.

Right. So, back to the emotional state picking up.

I could be a little frustrated with the sheer volumes of work on my plate, but the fact that my emotional state is picking back up where I was in high school and completely overwhelmed with homework and keeping the family running smoothly, that little frustrated turns into complete basket-case type overwhelmed and I find myself sobbing uncontrollably over the prospect of going back to work after walking the dog and cleaning up whatever mess he has happened to create while I was away.

Or I might be a little angry at the fact that Joe User has sent me an email AND cc-ed my boss AND his boss...an email in which he uses the most condescending, patronizing tone and expounds at length on exactly how I should do my job...but my emotional state is picking back up where I watched some overpriviledged kid make an offhand off-color racist joke to his friend and I so wanted to reach over the table and throttle him but couldn't because the teacher was talking about word problems up in front. So a little angry becomes incineratingly furious.

I'm not knocking tears or righteous anger here, I'm just having problems with them and my work world crashing into each other. It would be great if I could somehow take leave for a few hours when stuff like this happens, but I'd have a tough time explaining it to my supervisor. If you can think of a way to convey "had to leave before I stuck a letter opener in his ear" with a professional spin that would also net me a couple of hours in a warm room with a blanket and a cup of tea, by all means email me.