About a week ago, I entered a really bad place and I haven’t been able to leave it. I hate feeling this way. The thing that sucks the most is that I’m aware of the change. I know it’s temporary, yet I can’t do anything to overcome it. This is what I imagine it feels like to have clinical depression. You’re depressed. You get it. But you just can’t snap the hell out of it no matter how hard you try or how many times you belly up and say, “Damn, dudes. I’m depressed!”
Because, damn, dudes. I’m irritable!
One might assume, that just by recognizing one has a problem, one might be freed from said problem. At the very least one might gain some insight as to how one might free oneself from one’s problem. But one can’t. And so one writes about oneself using “one”, and one grows increasingly more annoyed with oneself.
This one has no idea how to shake this ugly feeling.
I’m never comfortable. Even when I sleep my brain is tossing and turning. I have to sleep on my side (obviously), but my IT bands are acting up so I wake up with the worst leg pain and it doesn’t go away until I massage it and that hurts like hell. (For those who have ever run long distances, you are probably well aware of the IT band.)
Here’s the thing, I could deal with all the physical aches and pains if it weren’t for this new miserable mental state.
How do you overcome this grumpy feeling? I can’t even eat a bunch of junk food to drown my sorrows because of the heartburn. You know what I had for dinner last night? Pineapple. A LOT of pineapple. I didn’t get heartburn. But when I awoke at 2 AM to use the toilet (for the 3rd time) I had some of the most intense hunger I’ve ever had. But I knew eating would be a disaster, so I stared at the moon instead. (Which was admittedly awesome. I guess that’s one good thing about not being able sleep for longer than one hour at a time: I got to see the lunar eclipse every hour from beginning to end.)
Earlier today everything came to head. I was listening to Soundcheck on 93.9 and Matt Wilson’s Christmas Tree-O came on. They played a few songs live in the Soundcheck studio. Now, I am by no means a fan of jazz. Some jazz is OK, but most of it just annoys the living shit out of me. But today? This jazz? Oh my goodness, my body just filled with rage—true rage. I can’t imagine this is the reaction jazz musicians are hoping for. And I must be part of a small minority, because if everyone had the visceral feeling I had, the streets would look a lot like 28 Days Later.
If the Soundcheck studio had been nearby, I’d have hobbled my ass over there and screamed at them.
“WHERE’S THE MELODY, JAZZHOLES? YOU CALL THAT MUSIC? I CALL THAT AUDIBLE TORTURE!”
How can anyone play such nonsense and call it music? I was so annoyed. And I needed an answer. I needed to know how anyone could call that music.
How is that noise music?
And then I realized I’d taken crazy up to level 11, possibly even 12. And while I would have liked to blamed the crazy on all that jazz, I knew it wasn’t entirely jazz’s fault.
Yeah, this isn’t really about jazz, middle of the night hunger or heartburn. It’s not about eating pineapple for dinner because pineapple is a wonderful thing. This isn’t about taking note of a glorious eclipse. This is about me realizing I’m not myself at all and that I probably won’t be myself again for another 8 weeks. I have to learn how to deal with it somehow. I have to learn how to cope with me somehow.
Just, please, for the next 8 weeks don’t play any fucking jazz.
Mihow 
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