Happy Dog Dance

I have been doing a bit of the Happy Dog Dance the past couple of weeks. It is a way of faking it when I when I feel so vile inside. It is a safe way to make myself behave in socially acceptable ways when I feel unable to do that. When I am feeling ill and unable to accept myself, when I am feeling ashamed of being depressed and cranky, when I am afraid that people will be mean to me if they realize I am ill and vulnerable (shades of the childhood and monsters of the X!), and so I have to hide it. Regardless of the pathetic little exercise that it may be, The Happy Dog Dance provides the perfect disguise!

I really don't like myself when I am not well and I know that partly because that is when I become most intolerant of the weaknesses of others. That is when I am unable to stand the company of others who I know deal with mental illness and I want to put as much distance between myself and them as I can. When compassion is not something I am able to feel anymore, especially not for myself. Actually, the truth is, I can't stand anybody then, not anybody, including and especially me. The world becomes a very dark place, and I want to embrace that darkness, let it take me into its soft arms and carry me away.

The mechanics of the Happy Dog Dance is this: I act appropriately, even in an approval-seeking manner, when the truth is I feel like a burning toxic waste dump inside, when I feel, in actuality, like complete and total crap. The fact is, the dance is an exhausting exercise at a time when I am already depleted.

Ah, January, how I hate you.

The interesting thing about this January's manifestation of a depressive episode, as compared to last January's (because physiologically this is the time when a combination of environmental factors do their worst to me and my brain chemistry lurches into that bad place) is that this is a more agitated episode. Last year, in the depth of January, month that I hate (because of the cold, because of the dark, because of the uncomfortable quality of the cold and the dark; tired by this time of wearing heavy boots and lots of socks, of being constantly hyper-vigilant about hidden patches of ice as I walk down the hill impelled by gravity or back up the hill burdened by gravity and laden with groceries; tired of meticulously stuffing newspaper into the crack along the edge of the back door where the cold slithers in like an ice-white snake; tired of strategically planning out my wardrobe every damn day, which shirts shall I layer and in what combination and can I still wear this really great warm one or does it stink and should I wear long underwear too, and damn these boots are good in the snow but they hurt my right big toe, or maybe it is just my right big toe hurts regardless anyway, and damn my lower back and left hip are stiff from the cold and the damp--get the picture?), last year I was brain dead, disoriented, and confused. So mornings I used coffee to jump start my brain, to melt the permafrost residing there.

I don't generally drink coffee, the caffeine jolt is a bit much. But I do use it, as a drug, selectively--Yes, mental health providers, I DO self-medicate!--when my brain needs something to turn it on, or if I have to attend a boring meeting at night where I will be expected to have the capacity to think. Last January's depression was the sleepy, stupid, brain dead kind. This one however, is a whole other beast. A beast that I must conceal within the Happy Dog Dance!

This one is angry, and irritable, and despairing in a painful way--I have been feeling so much emotional pain inside. It is the pain that makes me nasty and grouchy and irritable. I am occasionally shooting off my mouth in ways I never tend to do, little closet approval seeker that I am. I think most people don't notice, but I do, and I horrify myself (I think I am still expecting the man in the wheelchair to come swinging in from out of nowhere and pummel me with his big scary arms). So, this year, I am using alcohol to numb the edge of the pain. Unfortunately I can only do that after work, usually when I am cooking supper, as I nibble food to keep the alcohol from hitting me too quickly. Because I haven't had much of an appetite with this depression either, and so I often have that first beer when I haven't had much to eat all day. I even had 2 with supper before choir rehearsal this week. Because people, being people--even if they are kindly and sweet, maybe because they are kindly and sweet!-- annoy me in general, and it is a sure and certain thing that my epitaph should read: 'She did not suffer fools gladly, when she suffered them at all.'

So, the Happy Dog Dance fits into all this quite nicely. At work, for example, when I wear my customer service hat, and someone is whining on the phone about their candle order and what I really want to say is: ' Get a grip. These are candles, people, not medicines for dying children, not food for the starving millions.' But I say, 'I am sorry this isn't working out in the way you had hoped, how can we help you with this?' (Though the Dog Dance did fail me at least once last week, and I did hang up on an especially trying customer.)

Or when the young developmentally disabled man (or whatever his deal is, we still haven't quite figured that out, all I can say is he is not 'all there' upstairs) who works there thinks he is really very smart and decides to mop the floor in the middle of our busy work area, while we are busy working there, and sighs and mutters in deep unhappiness because we are walking where he just mopped, and I want to say: 'What do you expect, you idiot, you half wit, mopping where people are working?' But I say, 'Man, that must be so annoying when people walk where you just mopped!'

Or when my boss, he of the charmed life, was bragging and gloating about how they were stopped for speeding, while zooming home from their fabulous weekend in the city, but the trooper did not give them a ticket for that, instead they got a ticket for having the windows on their very expensive, top of the line, Mercedes wagon tinted too dark, and the dealer actually fixed the windows for free! so the whole thing will cost him nothing! and he won't get any points on his license! and isn't that great? And while I want to say, 'Why do you get all the breaks, you fat little fool?', I am actually wagging my tail and saying, with my big pink doggy tongue lolling, 'Yes, that is great, you are so fortunate...'.

I make myself sick. I become the happy dog, smiling and wagging my idiot tail, and saying pleasing things to people I would just as soon bite. It works. The pathetic little dance works. And it makes me so tired.

But the alternative could be worse, it could be something like this: my unhappy dogs the other morning, doing a decidedly unhappy dog dance of their own together. We were just back from our walk, almost to the house, about the time when my big toe is numb and yet sore from the boot or my own creeping age and I just want to get back into the house and thaw out my frozen cheeks, and Bumby does too because she is pulling extra hard. She knows there is a biscuit waiting for her, once we are back inside. And Little Bear has his own little game going on, he is trying to grab that last frozen cat turd and eat it, because he thinks I won't notice. We were right about there when the minister of the Methodist Church was making her solitary morning pilgrimage up the hill in her bright and pretty pink coat, all bundled up like a monk and barely visible inside her hood. She is a tiny woman and she is very sweet and she is always cheerful, never says 'Isnt' it a crap day?', like I want to say. So there she was and I began spilling my idiot guts, because I perceived a sympathetic listener, maybe, even one with some special prayer pull with the Big Guy Upstairs, and I am telling her how I hate January and why, all the while despising myself for revealing my weakness so blatantly, and as I am blathering on like this, the dogs don't like my attention diverted away from them and our daily task, and so, mental toddlers that they are, they start rough housing. Well, Little bear started it, and Bumby was up for it, but as I kept running my mouth like a stupid weak fool, they escalated until Little Bear was in it for real and Bumby ain't taking any of that crap from him and they are dog fighting in earnest and I am somehow telling them, without faking it, in measured tones, how Very Bad this all is, while trying to disentangle them. Finally I simply let go of Bumby's leash but she kept coming in for another bite at Little Bear anyway, and he was so up for it, he never met a fight he will ever back down from, oh no that wild mountain bear will go to the very bloody end, and, somehow, finally, I managed a semblance of separation and Bumby was just ahead of us with her tail between her legs, looking back, still primed to defend herself, and I was still constantly chanting, Very Bad You Are Both Very Bad, and so into the house we went, the pink garbed emissary of God forgotten behind us. And no, they did not get any biscuits that morning.

Oh yes I do so hate January.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai