Blues (not the music kind)

It starts very subtle. One day you wake up and instead of jumping off the bed singing and full of energy like you usually do (at least I do), you look at the ceiling, with eyes half-open, and wonder how you will get out of bed.

You start a fight with your mother via Instant Message, when she lives on the other side of the planet, and let it escalate to unproportional levels. You involve your poor dad in the discussion, pulling him out of his cigarette comma. Thankfully your mother has the presence of mind to log off and your dad goes further into his cave not to get involved.

With your irritable batteries still charged, you aim for the next victim: your unsuspecting husband.

Here is the disconcerting thing about the blues: when you are blue, you don't know you are blue. You just feel lethargic, tired, emotional, irritable, uncomfortable, and you think it has GOT to be someone else's fault. "I can't be unhappy just because," you tell yourself, "That would make me a crazy person, and I am not a crazy person. Somebody or something has caused this, but whom or what?"

Then you have a fight with your own shadow, because you can't get your mind to shut up. That's usually when the crying begins, and like a faulty faucet, it doesn't seem to stop.

Your brain craves good fats, but of course what it tells you is that you need chocolate, which in turns makes your brain even more unhappy, adding up to the anxiety that you now feel with the extra sugar, caffeine, and guilty overindulgent feelings.

The rational side of you (what is left of it), tells you to get moving, that exercise will be good for you. You tell it no, and grow roots on the couch, because when you are blue, moving sounds like water boarding.

When you are not pregnant and you are blue, you get your period and suddenly everything makes sense. You go back to waking up in a good mood and you go through an apologizing stage with loved ones.

Here is the thing they don't tell you about pregnancy, however: you don't have to wait until postpartum to get depression. You could get blue out of the blue, and there's no menstrual period in sight to end it all.

There's always shopping, though, and that's where I am forcing myself to go to try and lift this foul cloud. Wish me luck.