Peaks and Valleys (and Rum and Coke)

I lit all the candles I own and am relaxing with a rum and coke, not a very exciting drink but a true classic. Listening to my iPod--the playlist entitled "Thinkin Music." No TV. Just me, my dog, my drink, my music. It's kind of nice. It's been so long since I just allowed myself to unwind a bit and think. I've unwound but by watching TV and zoning out, not thinking.

My life is full of peaks and valleys. I have emotional peaks and valleys, which come from my depression. I tend not to feel just normal; I feel either nearly ecstatic and giggly (which often leads people to wonder if I'm drunk) or--more often--withdrawn and depressed, at the bottom of my own personal pit of emotional hell. I've battled depression since I was in high school but it was always relatively manageable until a little over a year ago. You know, when my boyfriend of over a decade left me and my mom was dying of cancer and I was still in a job I hated and had no friends. Then.

But ever since I started taking my happy pills things have been much better. I never took pills before because I worried about them causing me to not feel at all, or at least to feel very little, but at the point where I was last year--crying everywhere when I wasn't home, just sitting there crying at work, in the car, at the store, everywhere (never at home because I had to keep up appearances for my dying mother who had to depend on me)--and with my mother (and my family) depending on me to get her through things, I decided I'd try anything to get me through the day. So when my therapist suggested the happy pills, I said sure.

Now I'm afraid to stop taking my happy pills. I do still feel with them but the peaks and valleys of my emotions aren't so far apart, and when sadness does hit, it doesn't turn into a long bout of depression. If this is what normal is, the way most people feel, I don't ever want to go back. I don't ever want to have the valley of depression be a short step off a tall, tall cliff again. The gentle slopes are so much nicer.

So those peaks and valleys are better now--not gone, just better.

But I also live my life by peaks and valleys of involvement. I am either doing nothing in my life or doing fifteen different things at once. Take right now. It's a fifteen different things period. I work three jobs and go to school full time and take care of my mother when she's sick and share custody of my niece and have a social life. Two months ago, it was a valley. I was on break from school, wasn't working my graduate assistantship, didn't tend bar since my sister was home. Didn't have my new fabulous job as DIrector of Operations for a political campaign. I did nothing. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Well, except for sleep with a couple of guys.

So here I am on a peak of activity and realizing I'm a bit overextended and am probably getting too old for this shit and wondering why it is that I must live my life in extremes. I'm in a relationship with a capital R or else I'm sleeping around and afraid to date anyone seriously; I work no jobs or three. I have no friends or fifty.

I got my emotions on a gentler slope of peaks and valleys; now I have to get the rest of my life on that gentler slope. Hmm. I think I shall make myself another rum and coke and think on this a bit more. And listen to Jimmy Buffett.