I’m currently writing this post as I sit at a restaurant bar waiting for to-go food on a snowy Thursday night in January. The post-holiday blues got me down. Let’s be honest, the blues get me down more often than just after holidays.
I’ve had an underlying current of depression for as long as I can remember. But certain times of the year the gurgle of sadness turns into more of a turbulent riptide that you can’t swim out of, pulling you further and further out into the unforgiving abyss.
Pulling you out until you’re too tired to fight anymore.
This time of year the blues are often referred to as seasonal affect disorder: depression symptoms that surface in the winter due to the lack of sunlight. God bless people who live in places like Alaska.
I know most of us feel pretty blah after all the holiday revelry has ended. November and December are hectic with all the shopping, partying, drinking, entertaining, and socializing.
Run run run, eat eat eat, drink drink drink, party party party.
Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on Unsplash
Rush rush rush.
Then poof! it’s all over.
Now what? Now it’s just dark and cold, no parties to go to, no revelry to revel in. We’re left sitting around in plain old, ordinary January. Wah wah 😔
Who doesn’t feel a bit blah during this month? Seriously, whoever decided on “Dry January” picked the worst month of the year. If there’s any month you need a drink to spice things up, it’s this one. Besides football (the Eagles are in the playoffs!) WTF else is there? And don’t say skiing. I’m a baby in the cold.
Maybe I should just stop bitching. Maybe I don’t appreciate shit enough. Maybe I deserve to have SAD.
Or maybe my fucked up brain is my own worst enemy.
The more I think about it, the more I feel that I’m down in the dumps not because I have seasonal affect disorder, but because I have myself.
Maybe it should be called YAD (Yearlong Affect Disorder).
I’m disorderly affected in more than just winter because after 50 years happiness is still a struggle. Because I worry that if I haven’t started to feel better by this age, I fear I never will. Even on antidepressants the pull of the riptide is still strong. It gets exhausting constantly trying to keep your head above water.
My enemy tells me I don’t deserve any better, that I deserve to struggle. And like a dumbass, I continue to agree.
Sitting here at this bar with my glass of wine, I am just now reminded that nowhere is safe.
The bartender’s boyfriend or husband or whoever just came in to drop off food to her. He kissed her goodbye and in front of everyone tenderly said to her “I love you so much” as he walked out the door. What a sweet gesture of unapologetic love.
My self-sabotaging brain says see, you aren’t good enough to deserve that kind of happiness. That’s why you’re sitting here by yourself waiting for takeout food to go home and eat alone. You came here tonight to treat yourself. You can’t even do that right.
I know how this enemy came to be the roommate that I never wanted and never leaves.
It’s because of you guessed it…trauma.
Aren’t you sick of hearing about this?
Well, I’m tired of living it. But clicheily, it is what it is.
People who have experienced a lot of trauma sometimes learn to deal with it by subconsciously creating a sense of control over the chaos. They create this imagined stability by convincing themselves that everything is somehow their responsibility and thus in their control. More control = less upheaval = more peace.
But this is a flawed defense mechanism. Low self-esteem can turn feeling responsible for everything into feeling at fault for everything.
When everything is your fault, you tend to feel not so good about yourself.
And this cycle repeats over and over and over again.
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
So self-hate grabbed its bags and moved right in with me. Never signed a lease, never helped with the bills, never even washed a dish. What a mooch.
And even though I made several attempts over the years to evict my enemy, it just smiled and laughed at me.
My PTSD comrades know this all too well.
And now here we all are. Us and our self-destructive brains living together in disharmony.
I took myself out tonight to try and reverse the negative self-talk and tell myself I do actually deserve a treat once in a while. Then I witnessed the interaction of the boyfriend thing and my brain reflexively went back to what it knows.
I’m not sad because it’s January. I’m sad because it’s me.
What do you do when the problem is yourself?
. . .
So in my interminable procrastination, it is now March 28th as I post this. Why did I finally decide to get off my ass and finish this piece now? Is it because the seasons have finally changed, my seasonal affect disorder is easing and my motivation is returning? Maybe.
Or maybe I’m just getting tired of being my own problem and telling myself all my shit sucks so why bother.
The first step to fixing any problem is to acknowledge it. I acknowledge the SAD and the YAD.
The hard part is kicking my negative self-talk to the curb. I need to say “pack your bags and get the fuck out!”
Then maybe one day I can learn to feel more light, hopeful, dare I say happy even. And instead of feeling SAD or YAD,
I can joyfully say yay!
❤️
CM
