There are reasons why people cry, good ones and bad. I find myself crying when people give birth on TV…the real thing, not the made-up stuff. Never happened before I gave birth to my own. People tend to give you an out if you’re crying at a wedding or a funeral. It’s OK to cry during a sad movie…a little less OK to cry while reading a sad book, at least in public (although I have done it at the gym…then again, at my gym, no one reads…they all watch TV). It’s OK to cry during a sad song (REM, Everybody Hurts), but probably not while out walking the dog. People look at you strange. PMS makes many women cry, sometimes for good reason, sometimes not one that we understand. Pain makes us cry…understandably…but less so for men, unfortunately, in today’s world. Frustration often makes us cry, although more so as a child…not being able to get what you want forces tears out of those ducts. Sorrow makes us cry…true…for whatever reasons that cause the sad in the heart…death is certainly the big one.

After all that, I mourn the death of my parents’ dog, Missy, who had a brain tumor and had been suffering seizures.

She’s been on this blog on and off for years, and she had a good long life, but it’s still difficult to have loved ones die, even the furry ones who eat poop and pee on the carpet and nip at you when they’re annoyed. She was a good dog, even when she wasn’t being good. She had been so anxious in the last few months…the tumor was probably pressing on something that caused that, or maybe she just knew something wasn’t right. Whatever…she’s OK now.

When I was trying to find a decent picture of her (she always looks a bit psychotic with the two different-colored eyes), I ran past pictures of three other animals of ours who are now dead. It’s been a rough run for animals…most lived good long lives like Missy, but it’s still sad to look back and remember them all. She will be missed.

So today has been a little more weepy than normal…I mean, normal for me now, which isn’t normal. Whatever normal means any more. Meditation has been having me ask myself questions…this week, the question is “How would you feel if you knew today was your last day?’ I always have issues with the semantics of their questions…last week’s really threw me grammatically for a while, but the idea is to watch your emotional reaction each day for a week and see where it goes. Obviously, they are aiming at getting you to see the big picture and stop worrying about the little stuff that’s annoying you, but my brain at first feels for my kids, who would probably be most affected. Today I focused more on the feeling that I’m not very happy at the moment, so it’s not that it feels like I’d be missing out on big happy moments. Kind of a depressing thought…funny that…a depressing thought from a depressoid. It didn’t help to look back at some of those animal photos from the past while looking for Missy pictures…there were many happy moments in there, reminders of happier times, and that hurts. I can hope to have more moments like that in my future, I guess, but it’s hard to see that at the moment. Everything right now is just very flat. Empty.

Every day. Even the ones where I spend some time with friends or go to the gym or make art. Flat. Empty. I’m really starting to dislike that feeling. It is in many ways worse than the sad…the sad is hidden underneath it, like the flat emptiness is a big down comforter, but not in the comfort sense of the word…in the suffocating heavy deadening sense of the word, and sad is squished down small and uncomfortable underneath all that.

It’s this feeling that forces me to do art every freakin’ night. And  to draw in meetings. And to write every night. And meditate. And cry. Fucking dammit.

I cut out more pieces…

Doesn’t look like much because it’s not…I’ve done 4 1/2 hours total. Sigh. Wanted to be much further along. It looks a bit better if you look at the trash pile…

but not by much.

This is how fucking morbid I feel at the moment…was at a Christmas dinner with friends who are all older than me, and all I could think is that I would have very few friends left in my old age, because they all will have died before me. Awful thought. Stupid brain. But the whole night was screwed up…girlchild and I are fighting about grades and schoolwork and pies. Yes pies. Don’t ask. And white shirts and family photos and Christmas and stupid shit.

I also, though, spent a lot of time trying to analyze why the iPhone 5s is so much more droppable than the 4 was. I have dropped my phone (which thank god has a case) way more times in the last few months than I dropped my 4 in the entire 2+ years I owned it. I’m analyzing the shape, the slippery nature of the case, the size, the heft. It is none of those things. It is me. I am even a bigger klutz than I used to be. Depression fucks up your brain AND your motor control. Great stuff that. New biological weapon. Unleash depression on the country we are warring against. No need for bloodshed…just make them really sad and they will just burn down their houses by accident and run into other cars and drop their phones, and we will just win the war like that.

I managed another batch of ornaments on the tree…

not done. Or maybe it is. Depends on how I feel about it.

And if we’re depending on my feelings, odds are they are predictably sad. I try to associate happiness with Christmas lights and trees and ornaments. I will have to cultivate that feeling.

Meanwhile, I’m going to take my other reasonable excuse for weeping, depression, to bed. Yes, depression is a perfectly valid reason to weep. It would be better NOT to have that weighing on you each night, and as soon as I can make that choice and get out from under it, I will. But for now, I will just carry it around…I don’t seem to have a choice in the matter.