- The weather turns cooler. I hate that because I love warm weather. Anything below 70°F is too cold for a daytime temperature for me.
- The days grow shorter. Once the time changes this weekend, it will be dark outside by the time I leave work each day. Given that I work in the basement (no windows) that means I get virtually no natural light in the winter except on weekends, and that is not enough.
- The flowers die, and the trees go bare. I know, I know, others see a certain beauty in it. I don’t. So sue me.
- Once fall arrives, winter can’t be far off. The only good thing about winter is looking forward to spring.
Spring & summer – happy times
Fall & winter – bleak dismal times
When the depression isn’t so bad then fall and winter aren’t so bad. When the depression is like it is now the oppression of fall and impending doom that is winter is overwhelming to me. Right now I feel overwhelmed. Life feels as though it is crushing me as it sits heavily on my shoulders.
Halloween seems to embody my feelings about fall – scary stuff, darkness, monsters, pranks and vandalism. I hate scary stuff – scary movies, haunted houses, people who wait on their porch for unsuspecting trick-or-treaters and jump out to scare the daylights out of you. I hate it all – every bit. I try to get into the spirit of things, at least the less scary aspects of Halloween. If I dress in costume it will be as something clever, not scary. If I attend a party it will not be one that focuses on the spooky but on the fun. There’s enough scary stuff in real life without adding to it on Halloween. So I’ll take N trick-or-treating tonight but not down the street where last year at two separate houses they scared the daylights out of me. I’ll attend a Halloween party tomorrow night held by the bi group, but I guarantee the focus will be on food and fun and flirting not scary shit. And I’ll continue to put up my real life façade that all is well with me.
Deep down though, I know that today is the start of the darkest part of the year. So begins the long wait for spring.
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4 comments:
A couple things come to mind while reading this post...
* Have you ever looked into whether you might have seasonal affective disorder? Perhaps a full-spectrum light might be a nice addition to your workplace?
* I hear you on the early sunset after falling back. When I lived in that part of the country, it drove me nuts to have sunset around 4 frickin' 45 pm in the middle of December. When my current state of residence had the big legal struggle over whether to observe daylight saving time, I was strongly opposed to putting the state in the Central time zone because I liked late summer sunsets, and I hated early winter sunsets.
* The struggle with the gloom of the season is something I am familiar with. Rather than looking at fall and winter as seasons of decay, I instead look upon them as part of a larger cycle of growth and recovery. This is the beginning of Nature's resting time, a nap, not death. For all of the loss that is entailed by it, without it, the awakening of life that is spring would not have its splendor so sweet.
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2amsomewhere
You most likely do have s.a.d. Light therapy. Trips to the Caribbean. Meds. Etc.
"There’s enough scary stuff in real life"-- Amen to that.I hate H'ween too, can't wait for it to be over. Onward with the Christmas decorating and baking!
I can tell from the way my mood darkens as I struggle through these next few months: leaving the house before daybreak, getting home after sunset - that I am afflicted in no small measure by S.A.D. May be worth investing in some of those lights for my office this year...
I go to a gym that has free tanning bed use, I get about 20 minutes worth a week, very little but enough to keep my spirits up. SAD is a real disorder that can be fought. Good luck True!
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