Who’s sad? Or is it SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)? I don’t think I am the former, not all of the time anyway, and I’ve never been diagnosed with, or even tested for, the latter, but with four days to go before the shortest day. the long cold, dank, dark days are increasingly hard to deal with.
Imperceptibly, the evenings are becoming lighter, but the mornings are darker later. The slate grey skies of England are so much harder to bear when it feels dark enough already.
This is not a new feeling. I have had it for as long as I can remember, going back to childhood, early childhood. I do not just want to lock the doors and draw the curtains. I want to barricade them and install blackout curtains. I am much better when I am out, doing things. Even essential visits today, to the vet, three different shops and even the local medical centre lifted my spirits to an extent. But it got dark so quickly this afternoon, long before the evening was here. I wish I was somewhere warmer and sunnier. far more in winter than summer.
Maybe I don’t have SAD. I know people who do have it and I sense they find it much harder than me to deal with. My depression and anxiety levels heighten in December, more so now that the local health centre cut my meds because they could interfere with my physical health. Fuck me, you think these medics could come up with something that allowed me to prosper physically without taking my mental health back down, but for reasons that were far too complex for me to understand that was not possible. Improving my depression might be bad for me. Go figure. I couldn’t.
What’s there to do? Go to the pub for a few pints, revel in the bright lights of town and talk myself better? Yes, that works for a while. Meet up with old friends – that works, too. And I have been driving myself to do just that. I have a theory that forcing myself to do things and see people is stopping me from giving up altogether. On days like these, my brain seems to have slipped out of gear and I am muddling along, riding on the clutch of life.
The days blend into each other so I can hardly remember which was which and which one is about to be which. Darkness is a real thing and it is a state of mind. These last few days before the Winter Solstice are the worst days in the world. Are the days after the Winter Solstice really any better?
No, not really. You can barely tell that the days are getting longer unless you hibernate until March and worse than that the winter winds have barely begun. January and February are usually the coldest, potentially snowiest months. The snow looks nice until the buses and trains can’t run and everything shuts down, just like my brain feels like it’s doing.
I daydream about 1st March. Officially the first days of spring, we have experienced warm days in March, sometimes very warm days and it’s lighter, at least the British version of lighter, longer and for me, better. But I know I should not think like this because this, as I always say, is my one life. I do not expect to survive my own death and live forever in heaven or in hell. I should look to enjoy every day, regardless of how dark it is. There is always something worth living for, always. And that’s the one thought I manage to sustain, to believe in.
I’m either sad, SAD or just plain mad. I just wish the winter would go away once and for all. Hate is a very strong word, but at the moment I hate it.
