Something Completely Different — SCD — is the name of my house. It’s a good house, with good caring quirky people who have been extremely indulgent of me these past couple of weeks.
Good thing, because I haven’t been well lately. Out of the last week and a half, I’ve spent about four full days in bed, watching Farscape and intermittently crying, hating the world, hating myself and resenting the fact that sometimes I have to talk to human beings.
I’ve written about SAD before, though not at any length. It’s not cool to write about depression, and I mostly don’t have the words to do it right. But here’s my experience of it anyway, in the name of context and better understanding. Â Here are some things that happen regularly in the winter.
- It doesn’t seem to hit until it gets cold. Â Then it hits with a vengeance. Â A sane person would move somewhere warmer, but my people and my life are here, and I love it here except for the damn SAD.
- I cry a lot.
- Sleep is erratic: I stay up too late and get up too early or too late, and my sleep schedule gets all out of whack. Â For example, it’s 1am now.
- Because of this, a 9-5ish work schedule is excruciatingly hard. Â I operate at about a third of my usual capacity for weeks on end.
- Until I get angry enough that something flips and I’m a productive fiend. Â There’s no telling how long that will last before I have to build up an anger reserve again. (Gosh, put that way, there must be a better way to flip that switch.)
- (There are better ways, but their effectiveness is no more predictable than anything else during the cold season.)
- Mood shifts are unpredictable. Â My arsenal of coping strategies for this is impressive.
- I get even more down on myself than I usually am.
- Accomplishments feel hollow unless I work very hard to make my brain think (but not really believe) otherwise.
- Good, positive things that people say to me take about five times more effort than usual to sustain in my mind without perverting them somehow. Â “She didn’t really mean that. Â He doesn’t really think that.”
- I feel helpless.
- I eat erratically, which in itself affects my mood. Â That’s a nasty feedback loop.
- It’s even more effort than usual to drink enough water.
- Everything is more effort than usual.
- I get lonely but can stand to spend only limited time with large groups of people, even people I adore. Â Cravings for one-on-one company are overwhelming, so I sequester myself in order to not become a barnacle to my closest people.
- Accepting genuine offers of help is nearly impossible, and the need to respond to them often reduces me to tears. Â Of course, I also crave the offers of help.
- Everything takes more energy. Â Everything. Â Brushing my teeth, setting down the computer, reading a book, getting enthused about food, everything.
I could go on.
I’m still functional, still me, still capable of surviving — at least I don’t battle suicidal ideation these days.  But it’s a nasty, debilitating, unpredictable depression, and I’m tired of it.
Still, life goes on, right? Â Right. Â It’s been intercession for a week now, with a few days to go, and the days that I haven’t spent in bed have been full. Â I’ve attended parties, gone through all my clothing and the stuff in storage boxes, reduced the amount of stuff I possess again, reviewed three conference paper proposals, put my dissertation back up online and tweaked it to update the logistical bits, backed up all my data, hosted locally *and* remotely, spent some quality time with friends and beloveds.
The only thing left on my to-do list is this grant proposal that I’m supposed to start writing before the end of break. Â Maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow morning and actually have three and a half days of true vacation without any obligations beyond the familial. Â Maybe I won’t get to it at all, and feel bad. Â The part about feeling bad never goes away.
So I’m exhausted.
Depression is real. Â Seasonal depression is particularly hard to deal with because, though it may be finite, it’s also completely unpredictable… like the weather, I suppose.
Life goes on, and we all go on, but some of us are craving sunlight and warmth a little more than others. Â Probably more than is reasonable. Â If you don’t, and you have the opportunity to be someone’s ray of sunshine, please do. Â ‘Tis the brutal season.