Not much left of the winter of 2018/2019. Just three and a bit weeks and it will be, meteorologically at least, spring. Apart from the day we go on holiday, it’s my favourite day of the year.
Winter for me lasts from 1st September to 28th (or, occasionally 29th) February and ever since I was a young boy I didn’t play the silver ball, but instead struggled to deal with the low mood and out and out depression that the long dark days bring along. This winter was as bad as any.
The darkness – and I don’t mean the popular beat combo outfit from Lowestoft – is a good friend of mental illness. The light is not a cure but it keeps the Black Dog at bay, or at least a safe distance away. Winter has always been, and still remains, something I have to get through. Just reaching 1st March every years feels like such an achievement, although I know really that nothing actually changes. I don’t miraculously gain a life-changing set of skills, I don’t suddenly cease to be overwhelmed with a sense of failure, I don’t see the future as anything other than an unspecified time when I will die. That is the life of this clinically depressed middle aged man. It is not meant as my wallowing in a pool of self pity. That’s just the way it is, some things will never change.
Towards the end of 2018, my motto was “change is coming”. For a number of reasons, which I am not going into at this stage, change, sadly, is not coming. Events, dear boy, have changed all that, so we travel on as before on the road to nowhere in particular and mere survival, as it always has been, remains the target, the only achievement. Some achievement. Standing still is moving forward in my world. Sad.
But at least the light is coming. Perhaps the light will be accompanied by real change. although I am not holding my breath. A flicker of optimism is almost always followed by more disappointment and life becomes little more than the path to death. At the very least, I still prefer the prospect of life to the inevitable prospect of death and that’s usually as good as it gets for me.
Another winter is on the way out. I made it. Buy for what?
