19th Nervous Breakdown

Saturday - Owwwww!  What a way to wake up!  Much too late (I have errands, damn it!), dizzy (still not adjusted to the glasses, which by the way are so strong they could stand in for the lenses in the Hubbell telescope), hurting like hell (duh), and plagued by an ear worm which is hitting just a little too close to home.  Come, walk this way so you can share it with me:

You're the kind of person you meet at certain dismal dull affairs.
Center of a crowd, talking much too loud running up and down the stairs.
Well, it seems to me that you have seen too much in too few years.
And though you've tried you just can't hide your eyes are edged with tears.

You better stop, look around, 
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes. 
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown.

Yeah, that's where I'm coming from today.

One of my favorite actors in the whole darn world is Mandy Patinkin. He has a talent for portraying neurotic, high-strung, shoulda-been-medicated characters, my favorite being Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on "Chicago Hope."  Yes, I know he has a reputation for being difficult on the set of whatever TV show he is filming, I still love him.  I also loved him as Jason Gideon on "Criminal Minds", and one of my favorite set of lines comes from the very first episode:

Morgan: Reid, are you good with this? We’ve got a woman who’s only got a few hours left to live, an incomplete profile, and a Unit Chief on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Gideon: [enters the room] They don’t call them nervous breakdowns anymore. Reid: It's called a major depressive episode.

If the great Jason Gideon can have a major depressive episode, so can I. And in the course of a long and sometimes overdramatic life, I have, perhaps not 19 times, but often enough to know, having started at the tender age of five, and after dusting off my B.A. in psychology, that I have a problem.  Okay, this isn't news to me nor anyone who knows me well.  Depression is a disease, and while I have made a million jokes about it at my own expense, I take it very seriously when someone else is reporting depressive symptoms.  It seems I may have been in denial regarding this current episode and I don't know how or if it is tied in with the fibromyalgia symptoms.

Well.  More of this another time.  The day ended much better than it started, with dinner at Kobe's to celebrate the 18th birthday of the daughter of very dear friends.  I had a drink and a lovely dinner with shrimp and scallops and my son will most certainly enjoy the plentitude of leftovers. Tomorrow I have cooking plans focussing on the pork belly and hot German potato salad. The Magic are playing the Cleveland Cavaliers. The weather has been rather nice.  I do not have to go back to work Monday morning; right now, the stress from court would shatter this fragile facade of calm.  Knowing, then, that I do not have to appear in court has kept my chi from being skewed too badly. And the beat goes on.