Source: Kathryn on Flickr.
Today would’ve been my dad’s 80th birthday if he were still alive.
My Google calendar app is set to remind me half an hour before my appointments/important dates. So, my notification went off at 11:30PM last night saying “Dad’s Bday.” 
It might have passed me by were it not for that reminder, and I don’t know what made me more sad, the fact that this is the second of his birthdays that he’s not around to see, or that I would’ve forgotten were it not for my stupid Google reminder.
However, that doesn’t really explain what happened today. I worked a couple of hours this morning at TMS, but as today is a holiday, we just set up a couple of posts for the day, then had most of the day off. Great, right? I was looking forward to having the day to devote to other writing projects. Then, sometime around noon or 1PM I got inexplicably sad. I started crying for no reason, which prompted me to think of Every Sad Thing, which prompted more crying. Now, I’ve totally experienced PMS-related sadness, but this was different. I lay down, and then couldn’t get back out of bed for a couple of hours. I felt heavy, as if the whole world had landed on my forehead.
A couple of hours later, I forced myself up, and here I am. At my laptop. Yet I still feel “off” and emotionally drained and I don’t know why. I’d say it’s just my dad’s birthday, except that to be honest, I’ve been feeling like things have been a bit off-kilter for a while now. And I didn’t feel this way on my dad’s birthday last year, and that was the first one after he died. Feeling like this is very disconcerting for me, particularly because it’s no one thing. It’s everything. And nothing at all. For very legitimate reasons and for no reason at all.
I’ve just been chatting with a friend online and talking to The GF, and I’m starting to realize that this is something that has affected me for longer than I probably want to admit. After all, that seems to be the big pattern in my life: there’s always been this part of me where things will be going really well, and then I’ll just stop. That just when things get really good, either something will happen to knock me off course and I don’t have it in me to course-correct, or I’ll sabotage my own progress. And then I’ll get sad about my lack of progress. And then I’ll pull myself out of it and make strides, just to have the same thing happen all over again. I see it in my issues with food, with my finances, with my general career trajectory, with my love life. Something’s always been off and eating away at me, and I may have been ignoring it all this time in the name of “being positive” about things.
Because I’m Terry. I’m the cheerful one. That’s what I do. I’m the cheerleader who encourages and inspires other people, but can’t always inspire/encourage herself. I make jokes. I set people at ease.
And right now, my life is better than it’s ever been. I have a long-term partner that I love who loves me, I have great family and friends, I have a full-time writing job with benefits, I’ve been making contacts in the television industry and commissioned to do writing work. I “shouldn’t” feel so consistently “off” or sad or fearful. But I do, and I have.
I don’t know if this is depression of some kind, or if there’s some emotional thing I’ve never really dealt with as self-aware as I might be…I just don’t know. But I’m going to do something about it. I’m making an appointment with a therapist/psychiatrist ASAP. Might as well make use of that fancy health insurance. 
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