Boom! There it is. A clap of thunder and the laugh of Vincent Price from the end of the Michael Jackson track – Thriller from the 80’s. (Incidentally, a great track and video for its time).
A shout of anger, realisation of failure and submittal followed by the usual ‘Right that’s it’, ‘FFS’, ‘You’ve done it now!’
These responses are pre-set programmed reactions that kick in and awakens the placard waving chimp in my head. Oh he’s happy now isn’t he the little git!
You may think the world is about to end or I can see the light of God in my final moments of life, but no, its just a calamity of small incidents or occurrences that have snowballed and built up just like compound interest does on a loan, i.e. it adds interest to the interest and then adds interest to the interest and interest.
It builds so fast and in such a way bobbing around and irritable it ‘pops’ like a kernel of corn to become popcorn.
Boom!
That’s my day F**ked!
We are on our way down, as a plane Captain would announce – ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we have started our decent and will be landing shortly’.
My landing albeit will be rough, fast, bumpy and will smash through the ground at such a speed that shatters my meaning and purpose of life.
Today that is what happened and as I write this in real time and emotion the chimp is still pacing the cage like a drunk looking for a fight in a pub!
I feel stressed, anxious, angry, confused, I want to shout, i’m in a state of doom.
The pull of the depression magnet, is like the force of ‘Magnetic North’ it’s constantly pulling me to the dark side and gradually my feet are slipping and my grip on the day is slipping finger by finger. I can see the chimp dressed in a Darth Vader costume waving a red light saber shouting ‘Join me Luke”.
Oh, don’t be so dramatic, are calls from the ‘normal’ people at the back in an effort to demonstrate that we are being ‘just silly’, ‘acting like a child’ or like my Dad used to say ‘There’s someone always worse off than you’ and would proceed to inform me of the state of affairs in Africa and how bad life can actually be.
In my Dads comments, I would always think of a joke from the 80’s and I am unable to credit the actual comedian as I do not remember when or where I heard it but here it goes something like this:
A poster on a lamppost says –
“ Missing Dog, 3 legs, half an ear missing due to a fight with a Pitbull, blind in one eye, deaf in one ear, tail missing and no sense of smell – answers to the name of Lucky’.
So, is there always someone worse of than me I would think, is it a game of Top Trumps? Is having a leg missing worse than having an arm missing, or is mental health not as bad as physical bad health.
Of course not, none of these things are comparable and each individual will act and respond in different ways and will have different lives and therefore we should not ‘Pigeon Hole’ people as so.
So its’ important that we should not compare ourselves to others and benchmark our problems as this only results in the chimp in my mind making reasonable arguments of why I am more eligible to feel worse and to make me feeling even worse than I was and ultimately sorry for myself.
Great!
On this note, this is similar to looking at profile and facebook pages or twitter accounts of other people or businesses that appear to have the perfect life and living the dream, and so the self-battering Chimp begins to complain and justify all my problems as to why I can’t just be like them.
Remember three things my friend:
– There is no perfect life – it’s unattainable it doesn’t exist – just a happy life
– Life isn’t fair – no one said it was
– There are no such people as ‘Normal’ – only ‘Average’, or perhaps one for the accountants, ‘a Mean Average’.
So, my rant, blog and thinking has wandered off topic, and back to the snowball of events.
This is how my day became crap.
– I didn’t get up earlier enough
– It was a rush getting the children to school
– I forgot it’s school library book day – I forgot the book
– I had to go home and back to school
– My wife said I was going to be late
– I was grumpy to my wife
– The traffic was obviously bad – it would be wouldn’t it
– Every light was red
– Slow driving by the car in front
– A cold phone caller selling me something I don’t need and wouldn’t get off the phone
– Am email hassling me for some action on an account
– An unknown number of the mobile, causes anxiety of ‘Who is it?
I must admit, that is the first time I have detailed a list and seen it in black and white. It looks average to me, and yet all of these things have built up losing their individual low value of importance to become one big ball of sh*te.
I will look at these and breakdown the reason if there is one, of how to eradicate them from the process and make my life better.
On the upside, it is fixable and I have halted, at least for now, this episode that could have become 3 or 4 days worth of decent to the depth of depression.
I have been knocked down, but I have got up again.
Hope this helps you!
I have done it! What a feeling, I have achieved something today, this week, this year. I have blogged today.
Have a good day!
The Depressed Accountant
