Just Leave Me The Hell Alone.

I am writing this to help myself. I am letting you read it in the hopes that maybe it will help you. If not, I do not care- not my problem.  Or maybe it is my problem- I do not know where I stand on this matter. Anyways, sometimes I am in a crappy mood. I should write crappy with a capital C. I wake up this way in the morning. Upon lifting my lethargic and heavy head from the pillow I am not sure if a foul mood will be there to greet me, but often times I know I am feeling that familiar blue tone of grumpiness by the time I am standing over the toilet, taking my morning pee.

I just realized that this is a particular chronic problem that has followed me around for most of my adult life. I am 42 years of age now and the other day I was reading through my journals from when I was 27 and came across the line: “I woke up in a foul mood this morning.” Suddenly I realized that I have been waking up with this foul, indignant, bitter mood for a lot longer than I thought. For some reason I thought that maybe it is only as of recent that I have been a grump in the morning time, but I guess I have been a morning grump for a lot longer than I wanted to believe.

When I wake up in a crappy mood one would be best advised to just leave me the fuck alone. I am often as bitter as rotten fruit. If you talk to me I will bark. If you come near me I will freeze up. I will unfairly judge you and I will view humanity as nothing more than a bunch of monkeys dressed up in clothes. I do not always wake up with this tone in my soul. Some mornings I wake up as chipper as a puppy. I am ready for a hug, love and am inclined toward silliness. I am optimistic about the future, content with the present, eager to start the day and to do something fun with my wife. But this only happens a few times a week. The rest of the time I am bitter and foul. I am lethargic and short of breath. I am heavy and congested. I am ready to fight. Just leave me the hell alone.

It must not be easy to be married to me. My poor wife never knows whom she is going to wake up next to in the morning.

What is even more frustrating is that I do not even know how I am going to feel when I open my eyes in the morning.

And what is most frustrating is that I have no idea why I am this way.

It may have something to do with the fact that I am not satisfied with my life. But this cannot be it. I have a nice life with a god amount of room for improvement. But maybe I am just unhappy with certain things or myself? Maybe I worry too much?

Maybe this is apart of aging?

Or it may have something to do with my health. Maybe I suffer from a particular sleep disorder. Or maybe my unhappy childhood and often-angry father are still playing out inside me. Maybe I have certain emotional blocks that create some kind of energetic constipation. I have noticed that often the mood that I am in in the mornings reflects how I felt before going to bed. If I went to bed in an unhappy mood I will often wake up a bitter man. If I had fun the night before chances are that when I wake up in the morning I will be ready for a hug. But this is not always the case. Often times I just wake up feeling like shit. No one likes to feel like shit in the mornings and I think morning time lethargy, shortness of breath, grogginess and lower back pain could put even the holiest of enlightened human beings in a bitter mood. So this is what they meant when as a kid I was often told: “don’t take your good health for granted.”

For the past few months I have been reading a lot of spiritual literature. I work as a psychotherapist and I feel it is my responsibility as a psychotherapist to not be as stuck and unhappy as some of my clients. I need to be content and in good spirits about my life so that I can show them the way.  My relationships need to be healthy. I do not feel right about taking my clients money when just before meeting with them I had to snap myself out of a foul mood. I should walk the talk; feel on the inside how I appear to be on the outside.

The one spiritual philosophy that has captured my attention is non-duality. In a nut shell non-duality does not recognize a separation between the inside and the outside. We are all one entity playing itself out on the screens of our consciousness. Nothing exists “out there.” Everything manifests in consciousness, not outside of it. This idea gives a person a lot of freedom around how they chose to experience the experiences that they have in their life. A person can choose to get swallowed up by the waves (which are negative emotions and feelings often the result of unfavorable experiences) or they can stay connected with the ocean. After all in a non-dualistic universe, who we really are is the ocean and not the waves.

Often times I begin my days deep beneath the surface of the water, forced under by powerful waves. I drink green tea to wake up and eat something sweet. Sometimes I exercise. I try to come up for air, I tell myself to focus on the ocean and not get caught up in the waves but often as soon as I do this I am facing another wave that is about to come crashing down upon me. Often times before the hour of 2pm- it sucks being me. I have massive amounts of salt water up my nose and my head is sore from getting pounded against so much.  It feels like I have a cotton ball stuck in my brain. “Just leave me the hell alone,” I often catch myself thinking but deep down I know I do not mean it. I want you to love me. I want you to take me in your arms. But just go easy. Be gentle and realize you are dealing with a man who is fighting against a stubborn undercurrent, fierce waves and an ocean that is often far out of his reach. Give me until 2pm- by then I should be all right.