It's gray and rainy outside, sort of like my outlook today.

I haven't been much in the mood to do anything. I've been missing doses of Remeron and Wellbutrin here and there, so I haven't felt as good as I usually have. Thus, I've been playing catch-up.

For instant, last night I took two Remeron. I felt like I was trying to push my way through a thick mass of aerogel; I was awake, but there was just this stuff everywhere, blocking me.

Finally, I took a Wellbutrin, and I felt okay, after giving it about a half-hour to take hold, watching "Family Feud". Or maybe it was just watching "Family Feud", I don't know. Either way, I guess?

Well, finally I figured I better get busy doing what I needed to accomplish. I got after it with my beard trimmer and sliced off about two pounds of facial hair, and then got in the car and got a haircut. People were telling me my head looked like a big, fluffy brown end of a Q-tip. (I asked them if that meant that I looked like my head was covered with ear wax, but they didn't really answer that.)

I pulled up to the hair stylists' place, and it was very deserted. Just me, and this one woman in her mid-fifties sitting out front, who got up when I got there. Turns out, she was the stylist on duty. We go in, I sit down, and she starts to cut my hair.

She starts cutting, and almost immediately, the phone rings. "Hold on a minute," she told me and she picked up the phone, and had a short but slightly heated conversation with whoever was on the other end. Afterwards, she put the phone down and came back and started cutting my hair.

After a couple minutes she looked at me in a way that I think was kind of funny (it's hard to tell without my glasses), "you've been here before, haven't you?"

"Yeah," I said. I don't come for the conversation, y'know.

"Has this girl who is usually over there cut your hair before?" She motions over her shoulder with a comb.

I don't know, I think. I decide to say that, too.

"Oh. That was her husband on the phone." She paused a minute, as if she was considering if she wanted to say what was on her mind, and then decided to go ahead and spill it. "You know, he's the most no-account fella that I've ever seen in my life. He's mean. He was calling to tell me that she won't be in tomorrow."

I wonder what he did, I thought, and worse, I felt like I was expected to say something, so I opened my big mouth. "Is everything okay?"

"No... hold your head still. She's in the hospital. Look down." Very non-chalant of her. A practiced non-chalant. She's a world-class gossip.

I complied; I don't want an ear cut off. "In the hospital? Is she okay?"

"Yeah, she's probably tried to kill herself again."

Now, first - she doesn't know me from Adam. (Sandler, not the mythical one.) Why is she telling me this? And second, if she knew me, she'd know this was a bad thing to be telling me anyway. And last, but definitely not least, should be she spreading this around?

Poor thing, though.

My stylist continues, "Yeah, she gets all upset over this bad relationship she's in, and instead of leaving him to make a life for herself and her kids she tries to commit suicide."

"Someday she'll make the right decision, though." I really believe everybody comes to the right conclusion eventually. Sometimes it's too late, I think, but I still believe everybody figures things out.

"Yes, but eventually she'll try and one of these times she'll make it stick." I nodded solemnly.

There was nothing left to say - we remained silent until she finished.

Is anybody ever happy? Why do we do things that make us unhappy? Are we hoping they'll get back to where they were before?

Right now I find myself in such a conundrum - Gurugrrl and I are trying to figure out where we went wrong.

She's right about everything she says. We used to have a great time together, lots of laughs. We enjoyed each other's company. Now we're both desperately unhappy for some unfathomable reason. What happened to us?

I wish I knew that we'd get back to where we were before. While we were discussing it, somehow, we slipped into talking about something. As she said, we were in "the zone," it was just like that. It was good, but then I "caught myself" and wouldn't even let myself feel that way. The good feeling drained away; it's like I willed myself to be miserable. This, in turn, made her feel uncomfortable.

I'd give almost anything to get things back the way they were, and for them to stay that way. That's the Gurugrrl that I fell in love with, and when I am that way, I'm the me that she fell in love with. Unfortunately, Thomas Wolfe may be right, and you might not ever be able to go home again.

An excerpt from an email I sent today to Booby (quoted is her, regular is me):

> ... I must say, I was really surprised, I thought
> she was a happy-go-lucky girl and I saw her journal
> and she is in as much pain as me, you or probably
> any other lost person out there.

I think everybody's in pain.

You know, the other day I was thinking that I have always been this way, it just gets to me more now. Even times when I thought I was *really* happy, like when I was in my late teens/early twenties, I think I was like this then, too. I think back then I was just having sex regularly, and that made everything seem all right. ...

I don't know what makes that sadder - that I can be so flip about something like that, or that I believe it's really true.

So what do I think of happiness? I think it's fleeting. I think maybe Bellona was right when she said that we all live in Hell. I think that if I were happy I wouldn't even recognize it.

Maybe I'm expecting too much out of life. Maybe life was too easy in some aspects, so that when the going got tough, I folded. Maybe it's made me a complainer.

I'm really sick of hearing myself complain. (It is, after all, my biggest complaint about myself.)

Will I keep looking for it? I don't know.

restlessmind