Effective Ways To Cure Your Bad Mood

We all have bad days. We all have days that we hate the second we open our eyes. It’s actually kind of rude when you think about it. We haven’t even MET the day yet and here we are, already judging it. “Ugh, I just know I’m not going to like you. I can feel it in my bones.” Then, surprise surprise, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and we end up hating it! Funny how powerful our minds are…

I’m talking here about the days in which nothing can go right, the days we are short with the ones we love and immediately feel guilty about it, the days we want to blow up the internet and send it off to Mars. “Take it, aliens! It’s YOUR problem now! Haha, have fun looking at stupid videos of cats for the rest of your life and dealing with commenters!” You look at everything around you and only see ugliness. There’s no merit in anything. Everyone is a parasite who was sent to Earth with the sole purpose of annoying you. Can people just shut the hell up? I DON’T WANT TO SEE ANOTHER PICTURE OF YOUR DOG OR YOUR BRUNCH OR YOUR TOENAILS.

So how do you survive the days when you hate everything?

You don’t.

I mean, I guess you can try. You can certainly try to dig yourself out of this random bout of moodiness and go do something that you enjoy. Maybe have some drinks with friends? You can commiserate about your bad moods and drink until the awfulness dissipates. The alcohol acts as a bodyguard for your brain and says, “No bad moods allowed! I’m drunk now, bittttttchhhhhh!” You’ll slump home, feeling woozy from the booze, and start to feel slightly bad that you had to drink just to feel okay. Is this what you’ve become: a working stiff cliche? Well, you know what they say! If the shoe fits, get drunk, throw it at someone, and then lose it.

On second thought, maybe you should just go see a movie instead. Maybe you should just  sit in a dark theatre for an hour and a half and see someone else’s crappy life projected back to you. Bonus points if it’s a movie about a third world country so you can get some much-needed perspective about your bad day. “Gosh, seeing war and poverty makes me feel, like, so much better about my own life struggles. I mean, I’m in a war too but it’s a more personal one. There’s no bombs and stuff. Just wine, self-help books and Ambien.”

No, no, I got it. YOU SHOULD EAT LOTS OF FOOD. Yes, eating makes people happy. It’s a proven fact! If your brain is too lazy to produce enough serotonin today, you should just eat cake. Because cake is serotonin, right? Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting in particular is like seven layers of serotonin mixed with orgasms and an eight ball of coke. (It acts as the white icing, duh. You didn’t know that wasn’t sugar? You’re so naive.) Just eat an entire chocolate cake while wearing a Snuggie on your bathroom floor. You’ll be thinking, “Ha ha, I can’t believe people actually have sex with me. Suckers! If they only knew how disgusting I am in my off-hours. Bye…”

Wait, that’s not a good idea. Eating an entire chocolate cake will give you early onset diabetes. You know what you should do if you’re super bummed? Work out! That’s what people say anyway. They say that working out gives us endorphins, which makes us happy. Working is out hard though and I seldom trust the advice of others. If you do work out, I suggest taking an unorthodox approach to it. Instead of wearing traditional gym garb, go like you’re dressed for a funeral. Wear a black veil on the treadmill and have it obscure your vision. Accidentally set it to the wrong speed and fall backwards, like you’re in some Kate Hudson rom-com! Then, get up and try to order a margarita at the juice bar.

Shoot, I don’t think that’s a good idea either. Falling on a treadmill would hurt a lot and just make you more miserable. Okay, well, I guess you got me. I’m 25 years old and I have no healthy coping mechanisms. When I’m in a bad mood, I just drink a lot at happy hour or eat lots of fattening food which, of course, just makes me feel worse the next day. I envy those who can deal with their random bad moods in a productive way because mine just stick to me like glue and until they don’t, until they go away as soon as they came and leave me a little bit drunk and a little bit fat.

I’d like to think I’ll get better at coping/healing my moodiness when I get older. That’s what I like to think whenever I can’t figure out the solution to something. I just assume that it will come to me when I’m 29 or something, as if that’s some magic age of clarity. “FOR MY 29TH BIRTHDAY, I WILL GET THE GIFT OF HEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS.”

It probably won’t though. I will probably always have these bad days and not know what to do with them. At this point, it’s becoming one of my only life guarantees.

Great. Now I’m in a bad mood again.  

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