Depression visits during the Holidays just like extended family.
At first I thought this was just a leftover holiday bland feeling. I always get bark-ish and bite-ish around Xmas because it’s so stressful for me. I’m socio-phobic and seek solitude for the most part, which I realize isn’t healthy. So logically I look forward to being “forced” to hang with extended family on both sides of the marriage.
But being around too many voices for prolonged time periods, and inside stuffy dwellings where the heat is kept way too high for my comfort, leads to huge anxiety issues. Add financial woes as we try to figure out how we’re getting our kids birthdays and Xmas gifts taken care of, and you’ve got a meltdown in the making.
So in early January I can look at my feelings objectively. I can point to Xmas and definitely say, “It’s December’s fault that I’m all DOWN and whatnot.” And then I remind myself that in a few weeks, I’ll be okay. Time passes, schedules settle back down, finances somehow work themselves out, new health insurance cards arrive in the mail, and Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. I always forget that Valentine’s Day takes place during Fucking February.
Depression will surely pack up its bags and leave on Valentine’s Day.
Every year, without fail, I look forward to the Day of Hearts as that specific date upon which my mood will — *BAM* — just like magic, improve for the better. Because logically, I know it should.
There is much in my life for which to be thankful. I have a very loving and lasting marriage, with two healthy, intelligent, talented, and kind-hearted kids. My husband is employed and there is a roof over our heads. We all have winter coats and hats and gloves. My iTunes account is an overflowing fount of music, and our queue on Netflix ensures we will never run out of shows or movies. Seriously. We might be economically oppressed, but we have a fairly decent life. Everything is SO. FUCKING. GOOD. There is no fair reason for me to have the blues.
Depression appears to have missed its flight. And is now going apartment hunting. Here.
Valentine’s Day is a thing of the past. We did all that card-making nonsense involving glue and hearts and shit; we attended the class party; we brought home leftover cookies and ate them. There are no red and pink decorations here. That day is GONE. So why the fuck am I still so DOWN?
I blame Fucking February.
Not the calendar month so much as the lunar cycle involving things like rotten weather, snow, coldness, lack of sunshine, sweatpants, and stew. Yes, I said it. STEW. Because what is more fucking depressing than heating up a can of stew?
Picture this scenario:
You need something warm and thick to fill your belly, since you haven’t eaten all day, and it’s shitty outside, and you know you’ll have to stumble through the snow to pick up your baby from the bus stop in a couple hours. You’re thinking, “I haven’t done jack-crap today, so as soon as I eat this stew, I’ll get busy and clean something, or write something, or make something, or do something.”
But what happens instead?
The stew is all warm and thick, even though it came out of a sad tin can, and it sticks to your ribs, and you eat the whole fucking can because who eats leftover stew? NOBODY, that’s who. So now you’re full of stew, and if you were tired and depressed BEFORE eating? You are seriously fucked now. You cannot possibly get off the couch. Shit, you can’t even raise your arms up. They are way too goddamn heavy. Your legs are too goddamn heavy, too. So you just lie there, doing nothing, because doing something is simply more effort than you are able to exert.
See what happens when you eat stew in Fucking February?
Maybe this is all that happens for you.
But for me, this is just the start. Right after the stew steals my strength (what little there was to take in the first place), the BIG SAD moves in. The one with mean, pointy sticks. It doesn’t yell at me. It doesn’t even whisper. The BIG SAD brings in an old fashioned movie projector and flashes the worst, saddest, hardest parts of my life video across the silver screen of my eyelids.
So I get to relive moments like that time I farted in front of the whole class in fifth grade; that summer after ninth grade when everyone seemed to friend up without me; that first year back in the States when my entire family fell apart and it was “every man for himself”; miscarriages (yes, plural); rapes (yes, plural); beatings (yes, plural); my attempted suicide; my failed marriages (yes, plural); and finally, the time I told my ex I needed to get some help, and he responded with the helpful observation that I really needed to grow up and get over this stuff.
This movie gets old. I hate it. I’ve thrown the film into the fire, melted the VCR tape, cracked the DVD in half, and written letters to the producer proclaiming the movie a complete waste of time… all to no avail. Like those scary movies where the doll keeps coming back, the movie continues to haunt me. Every time I think I’ve pressed STOP for the final time, it turns out it was merely the PAUSE button. And something jogs the machine lose and somehow I hit PLAY. Again, and again, and again.
If Fucking February would just… fucking… END.
I feel like I could pack the movie away, along with the stew and the Depression that comes with it, if I could only flip the calendar page AWAY from Fucking February. Somehow I just have a sense that March 1st will be the magical fix-all.
In the meantime, I make jokes. I talk about my missing Moxy, and its current replacement, Lethargy. I try to pretend everything is okay, because really — WHAT THE FUCK ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? I just have to get through this. I just have to plow through the days of Fucking February, enjoy each smile, try not to skip my Happiness Project because times like these are when I really need it most. Hug my babies. Write through the pain. Read upbeat material. Find uplifting quotes. Talk it out.
Wait. What? Talk to WHOM?
I forgot — I’m not alone!
Look at all these people writing about Depression and Fucking February and Seasonal Sadness and all that down-down-down shit. I’m not the only one going through this. What I’m experiencing is perfectly normal. What’s happening to me isn’t weird or bad or wrong or anything to freak out about. Others are Depressed, too.
wrote about having a hard time this month in her article “I think I have a case of the February blahs” dated February 20. She says, “I’m doing everything I can to keep myself up and busy and going but the mornings are just doing me in.” Me, too, Amy.
The same day, wrote “Strategies to Fight Depression”. “The Blues. A bit of a funk. The Twilight. Down. Off.” Yep, all of that.
Another piece on February 20: “Six warning signs of depression” by in which he lists the signals that tell him he is heading into a depression so he can have “stamina to run through it.” His warning signs? Yeah. I got ‘em all. Kinda like catching Pokemon.
“This cold and snow is beginning to wear on me,” says , in her post on February 21, “Is it Time for Cocktails on the Patio Yet? C’mon Winter. End already!” Gurl, I feel your pain!
And on February 22, wrote about S.A.D., or Seasonal Affective Disorder, which, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “is a kind of depression that occurs at a certain time of the year, usually in the winter.” Like Jenn, “Yep, this is what I’ve got.”
I know it’s wrong to find pleasure in someone else’s pain.
It’s not that I’m HAPPY other people are sad, too. I mean, okay, well, actually, I AM happy about it. But not in a sadist kind of way. I’m just glad that I’m not the only one suffering the cruelty of Fucking February. Knowing that other people, too, have this problem, means that someone else out there will leave me a comment. A comment along the lines of, “OMG, I KNOW, RIGHT?”
Eat shit, Fucking February.
Your days are numbered. Literally. Don’t get too comfy, because your dear friend Depression just got declined. No apartments available for your kind in this neighborhood. We like our citizens SAD-free.
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