Old Whine In A New Bottle

Wanna know what the worst part of having a mood disorder is, for me?

If not, read no further, because I'm about to whine a bit. If so, read on.

*****

It's the paranoia. The big P is a cast-iron bitch. Because, while you can beat it into submission with the proper meds and a decent "Happy Place", you never know what's going to trigger it.

Take this fer'instance:

Your wife buys a new watch. For whatever reason, she decides to buy a big, chunky man-ish model. Your wife neglects to show you this watch. (Or, to be fair, you just don't remember the damned thing.)

Your wife bathes the dog while you're at work on evening shift. While doing so, she takes the watch off and wraps it around the towel rack.

Keep in mind that you haven't actually seen her in two days, and suffer from a chronic fear that you're not getting enough canoodling time to meet her needs anyway.

You wake up the next morning, long after your wife has left for work, and go to take a shower. You see said man's watch in your bathroom, hanging on your shower rack. Remember, you haven't seen your wife in two days, except while she sleeps.

That's the lovely moment when Paranoia decides to swoop in and cop a squat in your cortex.

Queue the "Happy Place" and a lot of determination to quell the nasty, ugly thoughts that well up unbidden from the recesses of your monkey brain. Only then can you exorcise the demon Paranoia from your mind.

And the worst part? It's never-ending. You never know what's going to set it off, and you never know how much effort it's going to take to throttle it into submission. One. More! TIME!

In re-reading that, I realize it's rather flip. But I'll leave it that way. I often get flip to cover for my inadequacies, so it's only fair that I leave it that way. Having these thoughts is probably the largest source of shame in my day-to-day life anymore. And that's saying something, because I'm barely recognizable as a socialized human being some days.

I realize intellectually that I shouldn't take the fact that I get a little more paranoid than the average bear so personally.

But still ... damn. It's moments like the one above that make it easy to understand why someone would contemplate suicide. If I had to deal with that shit on a daily basis, it would tear my world apart every frakking day. As it is, I only have to reaffirm the foundations of my little corner of the world every so often. And I can handle that, I guess.