Lemuel is a good friend of Gene the Brain Tick. Unlike Gene, Lemuel is an agent of chaos. He's not happy just feeding on my insecurities and blowing them up. Lemuel is the cause. Let's put it this way: if Gene is the grease fire on my brain, Lemuel is the gleeful ingenue with an oily rag collection and an affinity for lighting sparklers and throwing them with reckless abandon.
Those that have known me for awhile, or even just met me once, or possibly even glanced at this blog in passing, might get the impression that I am a laid back, type B surfer type. I put up a fairly good front, but in fact, I am wound fairly tight, I suffer from what is innocuously called "Generalized Anxiety Disorder". This is akin to calling a chainsaw wound a "Randomized Flesh Realignment". Paired with an ever present degree of depression I've dealt with for years, and a skewed sense of self worth, I've made myself the belle of the ball.
Things got bad enough a few years ago after a relationship ended and things got tough at work that I went to my doctor for help. Like mos trips to the doctor for me, this did not help. The time I saw him previously, I went to get a pinched nerve fixed and was wrongly diagnosed with a tumor on my pituitary gland. This time, I was given pills that gave me all of the side effect with none of the cure, so I gave up on them and continued with my normal coping mechanism: pushing things into a tiny ball of hate in my chest that sporadically bursts on the innocent.
This works for only so long before you are either freaking out on people in public at random, pissing your friends off by complaining about the same things that are wrong with your life, and/or barely being able to cope at work without anxiety and anger controlling your every action. I went back to the doctor, we talked about my issues, and he gave me pills that he thought might work better.
The wonderful thing about the pills is that they worked to fix most of the problems I had. My anxiety attacks are down about 95%. I can get through a day of work or a rush hour drive without my chest tightening to sickening lengths. My brain doesn't flood at night with lost seratonin and chemicals that can't find the right receivers, leaving me emotional and pushing the ever present feeling of loneliness to the only thing I can think of. In fact, I don't really have those feeling at all. And that is the bad thing about the pills. I don't exactly have any strong feelings, unless apathy is a feeling, then I have a shitload of that. If "only wanting to sit in my recliner and watch reruns of Supernatural while drinking coffee" is a feeling, than I am the best at that feeling.
I laugh at tv shows. I can enjoy things still, and I can still get pissed off, but for the most part, I'm just in the vaguely velvety room where I can see the feelings through the door, but they are in the other room. This doesn't bode well for a writer, or a comedian, or asshole, or whatever you want to call me and what I do. This is why I haven't been posting. I just can't get the ire up, or the comedy. I think this post feels pretty forced honestly.
I have a choice: I can take the pills and be a bit less of a miserable person, or stop taking them to try to be a bit better at something I am good at and that I enjoy. For the time being, I am taking the pills. I'll keep trying to write this blog, and hopefully it's still something people want to read. I hope so, but I couldn't even do something as meaningful and powerful as Allie Brosh did with her Hyperbole and a Half admittance of depression.
What I can say is that if I have a choice where I am not sitting in bed a night and trying to remember the last woman that actually showed me affection, or who the last person that wasn't family was that said they loved me and actually meant it was, but I'm just worse at writing this blog that hasn't gotten me famous in three years, I'll finally try to be happy for once.
Hopefully you're all down with that too.
I'll try to be funny again next week, I promise.
You're the man, Greg
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