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This SADiary was started in the beginning of the winter of 1998. Although it wasn't noted during the writing, it has ended in the year 2002. I made the move from Canada back to Ohio in March of 1999. Being a bit less north has helped the SAD. This series of events doesn't have a concrete time period. This SAD cycle repeats itself pretty much the same year after year. Each spring it feels wonderful to come out of it and each fall it is hard to believe that I will be getting so down in a few short months. Each year I keep thinking that Prozac is the answer but in the spring I congratulate myself for having come through it without meds and each fall I feel that I will be able to handle it on my own forgetting just how bad it is for at least eight weeks from the end of December till the end of February. Sometimes it takes till mid-March to shake the cobwebs free. Now that I've tried it on my own for several years now, one of these years will be a Prozac year so that I can compare the difference. I've been trying to keep myself free from medication but I shouldn't let my stubbornness make me lose two months out of the year.) January 2, 1998 So, it's a new year. The windows have been shut for two months now. In Canada, you have to shut the windows sooner than I'm used to having to do it in Ohio. At first, it's a novelty having the house closed up. All the outside sounds are wonderfully diminished. You don't hear the neighbors' cars starting up early in the morning, or lawnmowers or neighborhood kids waking you up before you're ready to awake. Where you used to share your life with the neighborhood, now you close up and enjoy the feeling of privacy for awhile. It feels nice to get out the long pants and long-sleeved shirts. A comforting difference from the thin summer wear. How wonderful not to sweat anymore. You start looking forward to all the crisp holiday routines. I slip into a cozy frame of mind anticipating the coming of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Three tantalizing months. Each one filled with a holiday and their individual decorations, meanings, aromas, and memories brought back to life. In Canada, I get to celebrate Thanksgiving twice--once in October for their harvest thanks, and then in November for my tradition. The colors of fall satisfy my visual senses immensely. Apples and pumpkins are in abundance. Their shapes enthuse me to bake and decorate with them. I create apple pies, apple dumplings, applesauce, apple cobbler, apple pancakes, apples fried, and apples baked. The pumpkins, with their marvelous orange coloring, sit around in corners where they wait to be carved. I keep myself busy with various preparations and thoughts of what I would like to do for each holiday even if I don't get around to doing them. Keeping focused on an event coming up helps keep my mind off the fastly advancing longer nights. Our family also has a few birthdays to celebrate to add to the growing sense of warmth of the season. My husband's is in early November and mine is two weeks before Christmas. The festivities and lights of Christmas keep me brightened with no troubles at all. The only consternation is regrettably not having enough money to buy the presents I would really like to buy. Like say, for instance, a couple of plane tickets to Florida for January. Then everything builds up for the big celebration. I can usually count on having a couple of my kids hanging around the house and that provides distraction and entertainment. A friend or two usually comes up with a gettogether that is pleasant to attend, also. There is enough of them to make me long for the quieter days after the holidays. And then the quiet days come all too sudden. Weeks and weeks of built-up excitement and then... You have January 2nd staring at you. It's like none of the last three months ever happened. Boom! All's quiet on the winter front. Well, just barely. The kids left today about noon. I'm rather enjoying the solitude today and not having to plan a meal for three extra people. I need to devote more time to the homemade lightbox Bill rigged up for me. The real test of its powers is upon us now. January is the month from hell for me. January 3 Nice to wake up to just Bill and me. Bill's son is with us for this year but he keeps to himself most of the time. I let the day unwind leisurely. Caught up on e-mail, played with my new computer and started to get to know my new toy. I am feeling a bit wistful, though. I'm missing my kids already. I know that I'll be butting up against the real winter blues all too soon. My daughter understands how that is. When she was living with us, she would try to cheer me up. She'd put on one of my Neil Diamond albums knowing that his music always provokes some kind of feeling in me. Or she'd want to do my hair up or try some new makeup on me. Or she'd invite me to go out to coffee, to get me out of the house. She was always trying to think of something to get me out of the winter doldrums. My husband and I are newly married. Have been for a trio of years. He's not as experienced in dealing with me and this draining disorder yet. I fear that he'll get tired of me this winter. January 5 A major rain system came in today. I could feel it coming 12 hours in advance. I started to feel a downward spiraling. A lethargy settled in. It sat like a heavy unwellness ulcerating in my chest. I had been too busy the last three months with several trips to Ohio, to Toronto, and to Detroit to focus on the onset of winter. My mind had been involved with details about how to get my second oldest son and his wife moved out to Oregon. Before that, I was involved in getting the two youngest two kids back to Ohio. Then, in early December, my husband and I took an impulsive trip to Florida to deliver two computers to the other two kids--one who lives in Georgia, and the other one who lives in Florida. My mind was focused on a lot of other stuff all through the fall. And now, abruptly, it isn't. The rain system that came today hit my body hard. January 7 I can't believe that it is still raining. I am a pathetic, hopeless mess. All I can do is sit at the computer answering e-mail and browsing the web. But after a couple of hours even that is too much. I have wandered through this townhouse looking at all of the things that I could be doing and decided that I didn't have the ambition to do any of it. I ended up spending the afternoon ensconced in my bed, propped up high enough to see the TV and immersed myself in a movie. January 8 My third oldest son's birthday. I didn't even send him a birthday card. Not even a cyber one because I've been so flattened by this rain. I've been depending on movies and TV a lot these past few days. That and doing computer stuff. Computer stuff I can do because I get focused on specific projects and time passes by. I decided to surf the web today and check out if there were any classes at Fanshawe College that I might be interested in taking. That's one surefire way to get me out of the house and get out of myself. Luckily, the classes haven't started yet. I'm eyeing one creative writing course. It meets on Thursdays and I'd miss the once-a-month Thursday writing group that I go to. I need to get out to something once a week, not once a month, and this seems like the ticket. January 9 Christ, the tree is still up. I keep thinking that if I just get started on untrimming the tree that I'll feel better. But I'm not going to push myself. I know that this spiral I'm in will cycle out soon and I'll have more energy for the tree. I was vegging out in front of the TV last night and suddenly I feel an easing up of the weight in my chest. From out of nowhere it comes. It was such a relief. Out of curiousity, I turned to the weather channel. They were forecasting only a cloudy day for tomorrow. No rain. I don't understand it. How does my body know? Sure enough, today I am more ambitious. I have some energy. Energy that has been sadly and frustratingly lacking in me for four days. I've been puttering around in the kitchen, interested in putting together a more interesting meal for the night. I even took some of the decorations off the tree. Ah, progress finally. Then an even stranger thing occured. I've experienced this before so it really is not so strange to me anymore. But I still get awed by it. I had noticed that the sky was lightening up just slightly just after lunch. About 2:00 in the afternoon, the sky cleared in one spot and the beautiful, glorious, golden glow of the sun came out. What little grass there was growing in the ground lit up a gorgeous green. It was like a light came on in my mind. A healthy, healing light. The relief I felt was instantaneous. I went to the patio door, opened it, and bathed in the miracle. Ten, fifteen minutes of wellness flooded through me. And then, just as abruptly, the sunlight faded. My mind didn't clamp shut just as instantly but for the rest of the afternoon I could feel myself slipping down again. "There must be another rain or snow front coming in," was my very first thought. I still felt energized enough in the evening to make dinner and do the dishes afterwards. Then I was tired again. I looked at the weather channel and saw that, sure enough, more rain was forecast for the next day. January 10 There is an empty spot where once stood an ornate and shining tree. The memories are wrapped away again once more. I mustered up enough energy to tackle the task. Now, the pointsetta is all that lingers from the holiday atmosphere and it looks strangely gaudy. A hush has settled on the house with almost a snicker. The letdown hit hard. The realization came that we are a long way from spring and sunshine. January 11 Lo, and behold, there was sunshine today. A hazy one but it was there. And it was blustery. Wonderfully blustery. The winds were kicking up pretty good. Good enough for Bill and me to look at each other and wonder how high the waves were at Lake Erie. It's only a half hour drive to the lakeside. We set off with new digital camera in hand. There was a stiff windchill since the temperature was at the freezing mark. The windchill was -21 C. I felt the sting of it on my fingertips when I was filming the wave action. I got spectacular footage of high crashing, relentlessly rolling, muddy brown-colored waves. The wind and the negative ions spraying off the waves invigorated me. I felt at peace again. Back home, I planned on capturing some of the footage with the movie portion of my computer and be able to play back the unruly curls when I wanted to feel that day again. The horrible rain spell was shaken off today, at last. January 14 I'm a fat woman so when I found out (from the Home Show Bill and I went to) that there was a group of fat women who met once a month (jeez, everything is once a month around here), I got myself to the first meeting that was being held after that Home Show. It was an enjoyable time. There were about 20 other fat ladies there. A speaker was there speaking on how to not let being fat keep you out of the work force. She was an excellent speaker and had us divide up in groups at times to discuss how we would handle a situation that she gave us, and then we would discuss them with the whole group. It was at that one meeting I managed to get to that I learned there was an Aquafit--exercise in the water--class for fat ladies. I love water. I know that being in water relaxes and uplifts me completely, so this appealed totally to me. I wasn't able to make it to the next two meetings and lost connection with them. They were in the process of moving to new quarters. I missed the meeting because I had to go to Ohio. Subsequently, I missed the announcement about where the meetings were going to be after that. This caused a lot of frustration for me, not being able to figure out where this group had moved to. I had a phone number but the lady that answered said she didn't go to them anymore so she didn't know where they were, or the phone numbers of whoever might be in charge now. She did tell me where the Aquafit classes were but said that she hadn't gone there for some time either. I decided to try to find the Aquafit class. Maybe some of the women there would know where the meetings were and I could get back to them. When in the throes of SAD, it is very hard to go out and be social. But I was determined to fight back this year. I ventured out the door to find the water class. It was supposed to be in a fitness center. I had my reservations but went anyway because I craved being surrounded and soothed by water. But why did it have to be in a gym? I hate those places. All those people who don't look like they need to worrying about their figure but are there sweating away down to nothing. I felt like I'd stick out like a big, fat, sore thumb. But I went. The gym was located on the north side of town, a part of the city I wasn't familiar with. It was further than I had thought and I was running late. The sign for the gym wasn't easily visible so I did a couple of turnarounds in the parking lot trying to find the correct entrance. Finally, I was certain of the front door, found a spot fairly close by to park my car, and went in. Inquiring at the front desk about where to go for the Aquafit class, I was met with mute stares. One of the women behind the desk flagged down a guy who worked there and asked him. He looked at me blankly. They were stymied. They weren't aware of any water aerobics class going on at the time. Not for just fat ladies. And they shied away from using the word fat. "Sorry," was all they could say. I was crushed and had a hard time holding my tears back until I reached the safety of my car. I had hit another dead end in my quest for a social outlet that would help me slide through winter. My frustration was so great that I sat in the car and cried for awhile. My body ached for the feel of total body immersion in warm, soothing water. And for a connection with a friend. January 16 Not finding the water aerobics class in operation last Wednesday seems to have done something to my will to function. I'm not doing well. An apathy has set in. My hubby keeps trying to pawn me off to the airlines. He wants to ship me down to Florida. I'm working on getting shipped out to California to see my sister. I've been to Florida twice last year. I need somewhere different. I'll go to Florida again in May when my third son's wife, Jeania, has her baby. Bill keeps telling me that I need Florida now. I do have to agree with him but I can't hide there for the whole winter. I'd miss him too much. I can't wait for the day we can become snowbirds. Or live down there. He's promised. This is one promise that I'm going to make sure is kept. January 18 I kept my husband up late last night talking. I've had one word for my state of mind this past week. Apathetic. He really wanted to help get to the bottom of it so he initiated a conversation about it after we went to bed. I've got more things going on with me than just routine winter blues. I am going through the empty nest thing. It's the first time in 29 years that I haven't had my kids underfoot. My center is all off balance. I am having to define new roles and directions for me. I don't take change easy. At one point I said, "It's the end of an era" and I knew that was the key point. Tears welled up in me so hotly that I couldn't speak. I went into instant sobbing. Bill already had his arms wrapped around me so he gave me tender little squeezes as I let the tears flow. I am grieving. I've been so busy the last five months that I hadn't let myself feel much of the loss. I'd talked about it off and on. And I had one major night of homesickness where I had to call my two youngest to talk, and cried on the phone a little with them. But I've seen them five times since the last one moved out in August. My daughter moved to Ohio in May. My youngest son followed in August. We write e-mail every day and call at least once a week. So, I thought I was handling all the emotions of it really well. I know me too well. I should have known better than to think I was out of the woods with this thing yet. I'm hoping that our talk last night helped me along in coming to grips with my loss. I know that it will take me a whole year without them before I will be able to handle it better. I feel so much regret. This one surprises me. Now that all my kids are gone, I'm feeling like I could have done more to make life better for them. This thought feeds even more into my feelings of worthlessness that are rising and falling in me right now. January 20 My eyes were feasting today on the bright and blue sky that has shown itself. There were some gentle snow flurries off and on in the morning, then the clouds finally broke up into individual segments. Big, white, fluffy segments that allowed broad expanses of blue to show in between. The kind of day that I like. Peace and tranquility mysteriously appear out of the gloom in my mind. God, I hate this roller coaster ride. My intellect doesn't want to acknowledge this break in the gloom. It knows that tomorrow another cloudy, snow flurry system is taking over for four days. It dreads the snap back to futility. February 2 Groundhog Day. How appropriate to make an entry here on this day. The day of the fabled sighting of the shadow that will forecast if we will have a longer or shorter wait till spring. It doesn't matter, the calendar shows for a fact that it is six weeks more until spring arrives literally. As for there being an end to this winter hell when March 20 rolls around, that is another matter. My husband says that I have become too demanding and clingy. It doesn't help that he is out of a job. He is wrestling with his own demons of low self-esteem and low self-worth. Mine are induced by the season; his by a twist of fate. So, I turn inward. I must wrestle my demons myself. I can't stand this feeling of strife, of turning him away by demanding affection and hugs when he is too drained to give them. I'd rather be wrestling with depression instead of resentment. It is more familiar. It is what I'm best at. So, I turn inward. My mood of rejection clutches close to my heart. It is something that I can focus on. I'm in this all alone now. Is it possible that I can find the strength from somewhere within to draw me out of this? I have always been distracted in winters past. Too distracted to focus silently and find my truths. Distracted by growing kids, by having to make money, by marrying again and moving out of my realm to another country. Now, I'm alone. No kids, no jobs, no unconditional supporting husband. I can feel the tears always near the surface. The tears are trying to find emotional holes to leak through. Am I too numb now to let them pass? The phone rings. I've been sitting at the kitchen table staring out into the haze that has risen up from the snow-melting rain. The white haze rises high enough to make a gradual joining with the gray rain-filled sky. All is gray. All is heavy with moisture. The heaviness of the day hangs on my head and chest. I am curiously dulled. I have been trying to puzzle out if I am feeling numb or bored. Is there a difference? Then the phone rings. At first, I think it is my husband talking to my daughter because the conversation jumps right into being flippant and easy-going. He is having fun with whoever is on the other end of the phone. Any moment I expect for him to come out to the kitchen, hand me the phone, and tell me it is Amy. But he keeps on talking. As I listen, I realize that he is talking with someone from one of the many jobs he has applied for. I keep staring out at the weighty day. Quite singlemindedly, a tear finds a crack in the numb wall in my head as I let a tiny shred of optimism creep in. Everything feels normal and hopeful all in one second, and this sensation swirls around my chest. It doesn't stay with me long but it has provided the catalyst I need to go on with my evening. I have been distracted once again. February 4 Another rain and snow system on the way. Does the gray ever end? No, it appears not. Mother Nature tries to get rid of the evidence of winter by raising the temperature enough to melt off some snow but Old Man Winter comes back with a fury to cover up her grassy tracks again. My Neil Diamond albums call to me. I put "Stones" on and listen with comforting familiarity to the songs I know by heart. His songs have been my companion for years helping me to feel something when I had nothing left to feel. Or making me feel caressed when there was no one to caress me. The "Stones" album washes over me like a cleansing wash. "I Am, I Said" brings forth the inevitable tear, thus, unleashing my numb body to feel again. His songs work without fail. The louder the better but I must be mindful of my unemployed husband sitting in the next room. His need for loud song is not on the same level as mine. I start with "Stones" and the numbness begins to melt. Next, I advance to "Moods". Contrary to its title, it has some upbeat songs on it that pull me further out of my shell and I find myself bobbing in time to the music. I'll get some more out if it's needed but these two are usually enough to warm me up enough to cope with the rest of the day. The songs are over. I've had enough of listening to them. My mood hasn't lifted much. We go out in the car to pick up the mail from the corner postboxes. Getting outside might help. This time it doesn't. As soon as I step back indoors, the falsely heated air cloaks me again. The walls wrap around me. I feel worse. As day starts to fall into blackness, my body reacts with a too familiar ache and a quirky stomach. The chicken that is stewing on the stove sends out a nauseating, oily air. The weary sickness begins again for the night. The sunlight is lingering longer in the evenings now as the season pulls towards spring. That will help eventually. But it is the constant grayness that is driving me mad. And being shut in is sucking the life out of me. More and more I turn to watching movies during the long afternoons to see me through till dark. When it's dark outside, I can't see the gray. That helps. Funny how getting things completely dark help more than having the sun shelved above gray clouds. I'm getting bored with movies, bored with soaps, bored with the computer, bored with my folk art painting, bored with sewing, bored with housework, even bored with my husband. I thought I would never feel that way. I am bored with myself. Even going to the house and garden show, or boat show, or the library doesn't help. NOTHING HELPS! Nothing, nothing, nothing. Not sleeping, not exercising, not watching TV, not reading a book. Everything is dull, dull, dull, dull... I have no energy to even scream. February 15 Valentine's Day. Yesterday. The one bright spot in the dead of winter. Red everywhere. Red is not a sunshine color but it is a color other than gray. I love the shape of hearts. The curve of the upper lines rounding the bend and tapering into a vee. Nothing is so succinct a shape. We don't do much for Valentine's Day. Bill isn't much of a celebrating guy. I've come to accept that. I don't have any energy in February to fight it anyway. I'll pick up a card and usually some candy thing for him but I don't expect anything from him. He hates a forced showing of affection. I've tried to get it through his head to just fake it but then I realize that I don't want him to just give me a token. I really do like those unexpected bouquets of roses that he brings home from time to time. Like the last two bunches he gave back-to-back over the last month, trying to cheer me up from the winter doldrums. He arrives home with them cradled in his arms, wrapped in cellophane fresh from the florist, and hoists them in my face so I can inspect the bright colors he has carefully chosen this time. Whaddaguy. So, I can't begrudge him for being a Valentine's Day Vexer. I have turned inward, sorta like collapsed inside myself for the duration. There's a heaviness in my chest I can't fight anymore. My thoughts flickered back and forth between the notion of needing to get a job and needing to find a friend until I vexed myself into a hopeless, unworthy state of mind. Vexed. Seems to be the word of the day. But that's got a lot to do with the fact that it hasn't been sunny for five days straight and cold, too. Oh, woe is me, woe is me has been my mantra. Evey day I have to keep reminding myself that the long dark days of December have passed. Are way past. Each day since Dec. 24 has been one moment lighter. And by now, one hour lighter. My head knows this but is unconvinced. The listlessness hangs on. The unmotivation festers. The air grows staler. The cotton vagueness in my head is pushing my sanity out my ears. It is hard to imagine feeling good again. The unwellness sticks in my chest. If I could only cough it up. Be away with it. But I can't. It hangs between me and the world. February 20 I have forced myself to go out and be involved in social activities--the Newcomer's Club, the Women's Club, an Al-Anon group, the bunco group--during this time of grayness. It's been hard. I go with open arms and a friendliness but soon fall back into my hermit-like ways. No one I sit with is on the same plane with me. I am not connecting with anyone. After trying to be comfortable with chitchat, I find myself sitting back and observing how much others talk about themselves and don't listen to the new people at all. They don't really get to know them. Oh, they exchange a few formalities and general interest questions but then they slide back too easily into the banter and inside jokes with their friends who are sitting beside them leaving the new person (me) sitting there on the outside looking in. This observation, time after time, has led me to the conclusion that there just aren't that many people out there with whom I connect easily. Or that there is just something intangibly wrong with me. So, then I'll revert back to my old (and familiar) hermit-like ways. The walls go up and I try to convince myself that I don't need anybody. I retreat to feeling like a bitter old woman who wants to keep only to herself even though on the inside I am screaming, "COME BE MY FRIEND!" But it's a tricky thing trying to find a friend. I'm at an age now (and so are all the other women I've been trying to hang out with so that makes more sense now about why I'm having trouble finding a friend) where I'm not as tolerant with certain people. I have higher standards now, I guess I could say. The women I'm meeting now fall into lots of uncomfortable categories. This one is too flighty, this one is too anal, this one is too housewifey, this one is too materialistic, this one is too simple, this one is too much into knickknacks, this one is into oneupmanship, this one is into her health problems, this one is a talker, this one's a shopper. Unfortunately, I've also discovered that too many people my age go on and on and on about very boring things. Because of this new intolerance on my part I have discovered that where I used to describe myself as shy, that is a coverup for the real fact that I am guarded. I don't want to give myself away to just anybody and get trapped in a relationship that I'm uncomfortable with and then when I try get out of the relationship by making excuses about why I don't want to get together to go shopping (I really don't like shopping anyway and I have to be in a really good mood to want to go) things get more uncomfortable when I see this woman at one of the meetings I'm going to. So over the last several months I have gotten quite a glower on my face. No wonder no one wants to be my friend. A revelation splayed over me like the sunshine now beaming down upon my head. In short, I have discovered that I have been angry at everyone. Angry that the right person for me hasn't taken me in as their friend. As the winter days set in, I withdrew into myself making myself more unapproachable. Or maybe more convinced that no one else was worth my time so I withdrew my friendliness. I dunno exactly. It's all tied up with shortened days of sunlight, screwing up my seretonin levels. letting hopelessness and helplessness settle in steadily, and recircuiting my feelings to negative tributaries. Of this I am positive because it has been sunny and bright and blue-skied for the last four days in a row. Four days!!! And there's been a warmth in the air unusual for February. I have felt a radiance flowing back in me again. There is a feeling of hope. Hope that I can function again. Energy. Desire. Spirit. Good. Words are there that I hadn't associated with myself for so long. I actually felt like cleaning the house up today (well, I said I felt like it but that doesn't mean that I actually did it). I know I'm not clear of this yet but I have a surety that the end of my flotsaming and jetsaming is nearing.  |