Monday, Monday

I’m at the computer (of course; how else could I be typing this?) waiting for Godot … I mean, waiting for 10 AM: that’s when I’ll leave for my medical appointment with Linda. Stress management, they call it. To pass the time, I’m tinkering with an icon I drew for a little computer program I created yesterday.

I feel crappy this morning. I feel anxious, jittery. I feel depressed, somber. I don’t feel like this every day, thank God. Maybe the weather has an effect on my psyche; rain is on the way. Or maybe it’s a Monday thing; remember what The Mamas and The Papas said about Mondays:

Every other day, every other day,
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes
You can find me cryin' all of the time

I really don’t want to go to see Linda. I don’t want to do anything. It’s getting hard to do anything. The mere thought of doing anything fills me with a dreadful inertia.

My cousin killed himself, and I understand why. You can get to a point in your life when you don’t feel like doing anything. You can’t think of anything that would be fun to do. Nothing brings pleasure. Every day brings ennui. Every day becomes something to get through, something to survive. Life is an ordeal.

Except it’s not endless. It will end. It will end at some random time: when that aneurism in your brain pops, or that blood clot lets go and hits your heart, or after enduring many weeks of agony from a cancer inside you. All those possibilities and many more lie hidden in your future, and one of them is going to get you. The clock is ticking. You’re running out of runway.

Or you can take matters into your own hands. Why endure years of unbearable ennui, a declining quality of life, and that ultimate descent into despair, pain, and death? That was on my cousin’s mind. I read between his words enough to know it was on his mind. On a Monday morning, I feel a little of what he must have felt. But don’t we all? Is there anyone whose life is perpetual good times?

Crappy days are a part of being human. In an episode of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy confronts a teenage boy who is about to take his own life. She tells him:

“Believe it or not, I understand about the pain… My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it’s not just mine. Every single person … is ignoring your pain because they’re too busy with their own. The beautiful ones, the popular ones, the guys that pick on you. Everyone …”

I’m not my cousin. I have a philosophy. You can read about it here. It should be read at night, at o’dark hundred hours, when quiet solitude is upon you and the encompassing darkness is broken only by the glow of a computer screen.