The Weight of Winter

It snowed yesterday. It was beautiful, light, fluffy, pristine white snow. Over a foot of it, as it turns out. So now we're deep in the shadow of winter. The holiday season, that threatens to suffocate us all.

I've known for several years that I suffer from seasonal affective disorder. It's one of those things that is more of a blip than an epiphany. The winters here are long and dark and gross. The air is hard to breathe, and getting more dangerous to do so every year. The sun shines for a few hours here and there, but only enough, it seems, to melt the ice only to have it refreeze the next night. As beautiful as the white fluff in the yard it, it also serves as a reminder that it 'tis the season for joy and suffering to battle it out for supremacy.

The weight of this depression is like a bowling ball on my chest. I'm lying down trying to catch my breath from underneath this season. I want nothing more than to roll the ball off my chest and be free of the pain, but the ball is actually the people I loved. The ball is my mom, and Dawn and Wyatt and Laura and Charlotte. This weight that is crushing me is entirely in my head and my heart, so I cannot remove it. I can't leave it behind.

I talked to my primary care physician today, to get a refill on my anxiety meds. The meds that haven't been doing their job lately. I told her that I'd like to try something new, but that I don't dare try anything until after February. In the 3.5 minutes she spent with me, I told her I'd been feeling increasingly depressed, promised I'd come in for the blood work she ordered 6 months ago, and mentioned that I will be seeing an ortho for my shoulder that I've been dealing with for 3 years. 3.5 minutes of her day, and I walked out feeling even more hopeless and misunderstood than when I woke up. Mental Health"care" in America sucks. So the bowling ball stays. The weight of winter stays.