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Everyone goes through cycles.  Up, down, round and round…  We pivot and shift but in the end we don’t stray far from where we started.

My peaks and valleys come and go.  I am alone at the highest pinnacle and lowest troughs.  Sometimes people stick with me through the small fluctuations, sometimes they write me off at the smallest speedbump.  But that’s normal, I probably do the same.

If you tracked the progression of the wave, my frequency has increased.  I’m finding that the more time I spend in the world (watching the “news” or wasting seconds turned minutes on Facebook) the more I become disillusioned with our fellow earthmates.

I’m sick of people.  I don’t want to believe that the image I have of them is true but they keep reinforcing it with their inane babble, their greed and their complete lack of any form of civilized behavior.  I am tired of seeing the truth.

I believe in the human race that exists in novels.  I want to believe that we are a species worth saving.  I also want to believe in Invisible Pink Floating Unicorns…  Sadly, I see no evidence guiding me to think any of this is true.  People are flawed.  People can be both good and bad, people can be helpful and selfish.  There is nothing special about Mankind.  We are a random, chaotic and self-absorbed infection in the universe.

I see no reason why anything should mourn our extinction…

I was working on a post that raged against the improper usage of common words.  The “Dictionary; buy one, use one” post  has been languishing in my “drafts” folder for a few weeks.  I was set to rage on words like;

Unique does not need to be modified.  ”Really unique” or “kind of unique” just makes me hate you!

Accident means you did not intend to cause the outcome, the word itself does not automatically absolve you of any responsibility for that outcome.

Racist and bigot are not the same word.

I was ready to get on my soapbox and (hypocritically) bitch about the misuse of language.

But then I read this article on the modification of language and it took all the wind out of my sails.  Apparently it’s now okay to just change the meaning of words based on common use (or misuse) and if you correct someone, you’re a dick.

Decimate and Nauseous were on my list.  This sucks…

I’ve got the lyrics from Dolly Parton’s song “9-5″ in my head.  The more I try to get rid of it, the louder those typewriters click in my head.

Thing is, I’m pissed off at the song.  I’d LOVE to have a job where I work a set number of hours.  Same alarm every morning, same quitting time every evening.

I’ve been tethered to a pager or cell phone, dispatchable at a moment’s notice for ALL of my adult life.  Two minutes to 5:00? dispatch to Savannah.  3:00 am on a Sunday morning? dispatch to Valdosta.  Middle of dinner with the family? dispatch to Cross City.  I can’t make solid plans for ANY weekend or ANY evening without asking for time off from work.  I can’t even have a few drinks on my own time without fear of being called out at any minute…

So it’s real hard for me to listen to the woes of someone who, come 5pm can go home and have a glass of wine and leave the troubles of the office behind them.

(I know I’m leaving out the female empowerment theme but that’s not the part plaguing me right now.  It’s the “oh so tough life” of ANY office worker theme that’s bothering me.  The really messed up part is, I originally titled this thing “Fuck You Dolly!”  but I couldn’t leave it like that because, dammit, I really like her!)

My pendulum is very short this week. And no, that’s not a dick joke. I’m always riding back and forth, up and down on my hellish mood-swing roller-coaster. Sometimes I get months between highs and lows, normally it’s a matter of weeks but in the last few days it’s switching by the minute.

In one moment everything’s just fine, better than normal actually. I’m smiling, singing “My little buttercup, has the sweetest smiiiiile” and in the next moment I’m screaming to the point of rupturing vocal chords singing “I want to take a bullet in the fucking head, just to get rid of youuuuuuuuuu!”

My brain is keeping me from sleeping. Before I go to sleep I’m having full renderings of those outlandish thoughts that you can normally suppress during your waking hours. Sex, violence, violent sex and other absurdities that normally, when you’re in line at the bank you think these things about the other people in line but you push those thoughts way down deep into the dark… Well recently those thoughts have been getting more air play than normal and now I can’t go to sleep without a slideshow of them just before I doze off.

A very tame example: I’m laying there last night, trying to go to sleep, my arm is draped over Teresa’s side. My brain kicks in with, “hey, what if your arm, from elbow to fist, was just a huge piece of broccoli?” I shush my brain and file that under momentary absurdities. And then… I couldn’t feel my fucking hand anymore! I actually startled Teresa awake by yanking my arm away to check to see if it hadn’t really turned into fucking broccoli! I swear, I’ve never done LSD…

And that’s the tamest thought of the night. The violence that runs through my head, the raw and visceral gore… I’m amazed that I’m not such a bad guy with all that uglyness running through my grey matter all the time. And we’re not talking about memories of a horror flick. I’m inventing new lows in the genre here.

I said last week that I was getting fed up with people and that I was feeling lethal again. Well, I’m still not over that yet.  I’ve been keeping myself from interacting too much with the outside world or the on-line community. I see stupidity, ignorance and bigotry and I just want to go all “Hulk-smash” on people. I know it won’t solve anything, I know it’s like punching the tarbaby but dammit I need an outlet for all this hostility!

And just when I’m sure I’ll flip out and kill someone, I’m smiling again trying to reassure everyone that everything is going to be alright. Telling them to overlook the small stuff and remember that we’ve got it pretty good.  I’ve been around some people that have it so much worse than I do.  Even in the order of “normal day to day” grumblings, mine are so insignificant right now.  I’m skipping along in a field of daisies compared to just about EVERYONE else right now.  But I can’t see anything beyond this monstrous, gigantic molehill in front of me.

I’m dangerous right now. I really shouldn’t be allowed out in public. I’m okay from minute to minute but what happens if I come across one of the people that honestly deserves to get their ass kicked and I’m in my “bad place”? What happens if someone else discovers that I’m one of the people that really has a good ass kicking coming to them? What happens if I grow broccoli arms when I’m out here amongst the sane?

If I snap and actually exercise one of these floods of thought, I’m sure this blog post will be used against me in the trial. But that’s okay, I probably deserve it and it’s better to have me off the streets and getting therapy.  And until they recast The Three Amigos and let Slayer do the soundtrack, I’ll just have to live with this tick-tock pendulum swing in my head.  I just wish it would slow back down, it’s moving too fast and giving me a headache…