It's Either Sadness or Euphoria

Summer, Highland Falls

They say that these are not the best of times
But they're the only times I've ever known
And I believe there is a time for meditation
In cathedrals of our own

Now, I have seen that sad surrender in my lover's eyes
And I can only stand apart and sympathize
For we are always what our situations hand us
It's either sadness or euphoria

So we'll argue and we'll compromise
And realize that nothing's ever changed
For all our mutual experience,
Our separate conclusions are the same

Now we are forced to recognize our inhumanity
Our reason coexists with our insanity
And though we choose between reality and madness
It's either sadness or euphoria

How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies
Perhaps we don't fulfill each other's fantasies
And as we stand upon the ledges of our lives,
With our respective similarities
It's either sadness or euphoria

- Billy Joel
I always remember the third line of that last verse as "And as we read between the pages of our lives..." Which I suppose is telling, or apt, or something. Anyway, I want the euphoria back, dammit. I guess it'll return eventually, but for now, it's the sadness. I want to talk about the reasons here. I do but I can't. There are people I can talk to, of course, Chris and a few good friends and even the nice lady who writes the prescriptions for my anti-crazy pills, but Chris is busy and unwell himself (bad toothache; having it pulled on Monday) and anyway he already knows all about it, and it's hard to go around talking to friends individually, saying the same shit over and over, and the nice lady charges $100 per session, and I'm inarticulate in person anyway. I wish I could just write it all down here. Sure, I could pour it onto the sympathetic violet-scented and tear-stained pages of a private journal or whatever (and I don't know where that even came from; my private notebook is a cheap one from Office Depot with a WHO DAT sticker on it, and, if anything, scented with bongwater since it went to Amsterdam with me). But some of y'all who comment here are among the smartest, kindest, most cogent, experienced, open-minded, flat-out wise people I've encountered anywhere, and I need your help on this. But I'm afraid of violating others' privacy, of hurting people I love dearly.

Shit.

Gendershit.

(Consider the above to be a state of mind, like "batshit" or "apeshit." I have officially gone gendershit.)

I better just go pay the nice lady $100, huh? And I probably shouldn't even post this. But I've tried to be honest with you guys over these past 7 (!!!) years, and, as they say, This Is Where Doc Is Now.