ebruary is here. The most awfully, terribleiest, suckiest month of the whole year. Winter is at its cold and grayest, the holidays are long gong, except for the Master Card bills. It's tax time, and that comes about with the added worry of a looming prison term. (Much like my writing, my tax records are very creative!) Plus the NFL season is over, always bad news. Plus even badder news; Superbowl's gambling debts are seriously overdue, ─like as in Black limo w/ Vito saying "get in" overdueness. February also brings us Valentines Day! A day when lovers show their appreciation for each other, preferably with imagination and charm, but more likely with tired clichés and money. (Roses, diamonds, etc.) To put it more simply; you best better meet certain conditions so as to keep your lovers unconditional love. I have mixed emotions about Valentines Day. With myself being chronically single these days, it's honestly a great relief to avoid the whole sordid affair. However it is also an undeniable reminder of my absolute and profound unacceptably to members of the opposite sex. Or the "obstinate sex", as clever me, sometimes likes to say. (Gee, who would guess that I'm still single?) So when I tally up all these factors. I am sad. In capital letters. S.A.D. As in "Seasonal Affected Disorder". The latest in the ever-growing list of mental ailments diagnosed by my highly touted team of brain care specialists.
What SAD is.
People who know me, are keenly aware of the boundless dissatisfaction I suffer with ─even on the most perfect, the most beautiful of days. But believe it or not, my condition actually worsens during the winter months!!! The official explanation of SAD is a depressed condition occurring during winter months because of the lack of sunshine. Which really doesn't make much sense to me because I spend the majority of my time in my underground lair, deep beneath my squalid dwelling. Even on the longest days of summer, there just isn't a lot of sunbeams bouncing across the cavern walls at 500 feet below ground level.
In a futile attempt to elevate my mood, I quadrupled my consumption of malt liquor products, but to my great surprise, chugging gallons of the cold and golden depressant seems to not help at all. But hey, at least it can't hurt, right?
As always, I have my personal brain care team on 24/7 rotation, working feverously to develop a serum for my mental disorders. They devised an intravenous blend of Prozac, pharmaceutical THC, and Lithium, which seems to help a bit, ─cutting a minuscule swatch through the thick melancholy haze surrounding me. But it's not nearly enough. One recently deceased member of my brain care team even recommended a radically dangerous regimen of daily "exercise". Because of his outrageous disrespect, I had him beheaded, beaten and then executed. Yeah, sure I'm gonna spend precious minutes a day in the cavernous exercise room walking on a treadmill. Moving frantically about, but not going anywhere! As each and every faux step pounds across the moving mat, priming then pumping the very heart, the very cause of my depressed and hopeless state. My pointless life is going nowhere. Or, let's try lifting weights. Let's pick up this heavy weight and then, well, ...put it back down. Now repeat! And again! And again... Gee, doing that a few hundred times a day will surely put meaning into my pointless existence. ─Nothing pointless about that. Exercise!!! You can burn in hell, you discourteous quack.
Despite my skepticism about sunlight, and a baffling uneasiness amongst my psychological caregivers, we decided to try light therapy. A light box. Or in my case, a light wall containing several hundred light boxes. You know what? It seems to be working. After 8 days of light therapy, yesterday I was able to drag my sorry self out of bed after a mere 19 hours of slumber, refreshed and ready to take on the late afternoons challenges with full guns blazing!!! A personal best for February.
It is expensive however; yesterday the electric bill came. With a 4 figure total! And the initial cost of the 280 full spectrum light boxes added up to some serious money. The rated bulb life is 10,000 hours, but for me, they don’t last much more then about 3 or 4 hours. ??? It appears that my dark somber mood literally sucks the light out of the bulbs! So there's more money ─32 bucks a copy for replacement full spectrum lightbulbs. Plus, I had to take on 6 extra interns, working round the clock, just for lamp maintenance. During the interview for said interns, I was in a particularly fragile frame of mind, so as to boost my self-esteem; I gave them all generous wages with full benefits. Let me tell you, the money grubbing tyrants at KatandMick enterprises weren't all too happy about that! The $#!+ really gonna hit the fan when they get the bill for the bulbs and electric! But hey, like I said, I'm in a depressed mood; I can't be concerned with trivial things like expenses. It's too... It's too dam depressing! Hey, if the KAM report wants fabulously well-written and thoughtful crap like this, timely submitted on a more or less monthly basis, they'll just have to pay the piper. I mean hell; it's well worth it. Right? I just bet ya it is!
Public Service Announcement.
Depression is serious business. A depressingly serious business, I might add. It is not my intention to make light of it. If you have consistent feelings of being down and hopeless, and these feelings last for weeks on end, you may have clinical depression. Do not hesitate to seek help. There is help available, I know that first hand. Drop me a line, perhaps I can recommend someone, or if I really, really like you, I'll get you an appointment with my personal brain care team. And that goes double if you're having consistent thoughts of suicide. This is S. Lyle OConnor saying for God's sake, don't do a Hunter S. Thomson on yourself. Get help.
S. Lyle OConnor is available, day or night, 24/7 at your beck and call. Just a few keystrokes away at shawnoconnor@hotmail.com How marvelous it must be to be you!
