I’ve come to notice that one of the fun little effects of hormone treatment is something I like to call Baron von Funkhausen syndrome. Yes, it’s a whimsical little way to dress up what amounts to a sense of profound dreariness and depression that seems to pop up out of nowhere, last for a few days, and then quickly evaporate. No, no, you can’t say, “I think that’s only you Michelle”. I’ve talked to enough other people who have the same thing from time to time. Yeah, I’m still not quite used to that.

I’ve noticed it almost always begins upon waking up. I mean sure, nobody likes to roll out of bed at 5 in the morning, especially in the winter, and more so when one sleeps with the heat turned way down low and the ceiling fan on high. Like my mom I’ve become an ice box sleeper, but that moment between throwing the covers off and grabbing my robe before I turn blue is not the most pleasant part of my day. Most days this is fine. I either go down and exercise, or drink tea as I bang out my constant stream of drivel feeling just positively chipper. On these day though, ugh. I end up hitting the snooze 8 times, each time necessitating the rush from my bed to the other side of the room, which leaves me 50 shades of grumpus by the time 6:00 rolls around and it’s time to wake up the boy. It only gets worse from there.

I’ve tried to figure out what exactly bring this sort of thing on. Tiff with my ex the night before? A particularly shitty day of work? The precursor stage of a dilly of a cold? The fact that it has been exactly 25 days since the last time this ferkakta thing happened? That last one seems little bit more on the money. The problem is that during these few days I generally feel like a cats ass in a full tub and really don’t feel like writing anything down. When it finally lifts, I’m so happy to be rid of it, I like to pretend it never happened so I don’t have to think about it. I really should start to though so I can plan ahead and stock up on Swiss Cake Rolls and Cool Ranch Doritos. I know, I’m trying to get off the Big Mama train again, but a few days a month can be planned in.

I have to be honest, it kind of baffles me why this happens. Yes, we are operating on a different set of primary hormones now, so of course we expect changes. The hormonal fluctuations, however, should be static if the intake is a steady line. A monthly type cycle simply doesn’t make sense without the organs present that drive extra production at different times. It might just be the appearance of a cycle that is in fact driven by external sources, which is really why I need to start tracking this. It occurred to that it might be the presence of my ex going though her cycles and pairing to her emotional state at the time. This makes sense because my mood has always taken on the color of my surroundings. It may also be that my brain has always been primed to be more affected by estrogen in different cycles all along, and now I’ve simply got the right juice flowing through it. This is all pure conjecture of course, excepting for the fact that this keeps happening and never did before.

Although now I know enough to just wait it out and it will pass, some things do help. Getting out of the house is always a good start because it’s hard to be Miss Mopey on a beautiful sunshine day. Not always so easy though to get the energy, and winter in Buffalo makes it all the more likely that brushing off the car on a 10 degree day in a snow shower will simply blow it all up into a full depression. The one sure fire thing, temporarily anyway, is to listen to ‘Call Me Maybe’ in my car and sing along like ditzy doofus on my way to work. Like a charm every time. If you see me rolling into the parking lot belting out Carley Rae Jepson, rest assured it’s probably a bad day to be asking me about the cover sheets on my TPS reports.