Tis the Damn Season
for leading lives of quiet desperation
Every October, I watch the leaves warm the landscape in golden colors and the sun start to cool, and I wait for my Seasonal Affective Disorder to join my persistent depression. My wait is sprinkled with always present anxiety.
The paradox is that fall is my favorite season.
I’m an autumn personality. I love warm, cozy blankets, hot mugs of tea, and a drizzly, overcast day where I’m snuggled up with a cat on my lap. I would love nothing more than to gaze out the window at a muted sea of red and orange, contemplating existential questions while water drips from leaf to leaf.
It’s all fantasy.
The paradox is that I dream of that every October as the leaves turn and the weather cools, but reality is a freakin’ freight train that I’m stuck on with no stops. From September to November, my life is an endless cycle of school days, after-school activities, grading papers, holiday events, and more events, and sports, and concerts, and, and, and…
I’m lucky if I get Sunday afternoons to sit in my cozy spot with a hot mug to reflect. Most weeknights and weekends I am still hungover from all the extroverting I’ve had to do during the week. I’ve survived these many years because I always know there will be change. The season will come and go. The leaves will cover my front yard, the Japanese maple will burst into fiery red leaves just in time for Christmas, the winter calm will settle in and so will I.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..” --Henry David Thoreau
Tis the damn season for quiet desperation.
Tis the season when my year-round, screw-the-world attitude which is already controlled by medication is compounded with absolute dread at the prospect of another day. Most of the year I look forward to tackling my day. In the fall, I dread breathing. Tis the season to be pissed that I have to go to sleep and then pissed that I have to wake up.
According to the ADAA, “Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is a type of depression that's related to a lack of sunlight or changes in seasons. SAD is very similar to the winter blues but with increased symptoms. People with SAD suffer the symptoms of a Major Depressive Disorder during a specific time of year, usually winter.”
The good thing about being middle-aged is that you’ve had half a lifetime to figure this shit out. I’ve always known I was melodramatic. I lived in fictional worlds of my making since I was a kid. As a teenager, I let my emotions have full reign. As a young mother, I learned that my melodrama only exacerbated the anxiety I had about keeping two children alive. I finally got medication and called it what it really was: depression. As a kid, I didn’t have symptoms of depression, but I understand now that my brain chemistry has always run in overdrive.
I’ve had 20 years of medication and reflection to recognize my symptoms. You would think it gets easier, but it never does. In the middle of a quiet Saturday in October, when I should be happy at nature’s dying beauty, I can’t even find the energy to eat. It’s a pathological stubbornness. If I can’t make myself get up and do something that I know I should or want to do, then why should I even feed myself?
I guess the bigger paradox is that I love change. I live from moment to moment because I know things will be different if I just wait. I love it when daffodils start to pop up in yards and roadsides in the spring. I love it when, a few months later, everything is blooming in verdant greenery. I love that every year, I can chip away at my goals and that change will happen. I love knowing I don’t have to live in my dread and despair for long; it will all change eventually.
Knowledge is power and knowing is half the battle. Growing up, I didn’t have any family members who would have recognized or acknowledged any mental struggle. When I began to recognize it, I was afraid to label myself. It was like picking at a scab, maybe I would heal if I ignored it. At least that’s what I thought for so many years. There have been many times when I’ve reveled in my depression; it’s just a part of me–the symptoms, the triggers, the personality traits.
Case in point:
At 7 years old, I developed a phobia of severe tornado-producing storms. Living in South Georgia, in the land of tall, skinny pines and unpredictable weather, I was taught how to shelter from tornadoes. Along with ‘stop, drop, and roll’ and ‘just say no’, I learned to huddle in the hallways at school until you couldn’t feel your feet under you. I knew how to always find the innermost closet or bathroom in any house I was in. The most important lesson was to find a deep ditch outside because I lived in a mobile home. (I would have died in that ditch, by the way.) But I listened intently. I was a worrier and didn’t want to be swept away by a monster storm cloud. I vividly remember dreaming of a tornado barreling toward my single-wide trailer and not having a parent around to keep me safe, but I just knew that if I went to the deep ditch by the side of the highway and crawled into the culvert, I could survive the storm. In this dream, I was terrified, until a big fluffy, Smoky the Bear with his ranger hat came to scoop me out of my bed and hold my hand all the way to the ditch. I survived the tornado that swept away my home because Smoky the Bear sheltered me with his big teddy bear body.
It became a family joke: ‘Don’t worry, Melissa. Smoky will save you!’ Cue knee-slapping laughter.
As a teenager, I was a mess: a bundle of nerves and depressive loneliness fueled by boy-crazed wrecked relationships. I still lived in the same single-wide trailer surrounded by tall, skinny pine trees that swayed dangerously when the wind blew. I was also old enough to watch the Weather Channel. Like a meteorologist. I tracked squall-line storms coming across my tiny spot on the map and watched the skies for signs of a storm. It was an obsession—a full-blown phobia. Nothing could stop my utter panic and debilitating terror when I knew a storm was coming. I couldn’t sleep if there was thunder or lightning. When the local meteorologist told us that we were on a tornado watch (the one where there is the potential for tornado activity) I obsessively watched the skies, listened for the sound of the freight train winds, and when it was too much for my mind and body, I curled up into a fetal position and hid in the tub of my bathroom (in the trailer that would just blow away anyway). If I were in a house (with a firm roof and brick walls), I would hide in a closet and rock back and forth. I felt like a psycho. My mind and body were betraying me. I knew what I was doing was stupid and unreasonable, but I couldn’t make myself stop. It was as if I had two people fighting inside my mind. One person was terrified and the other was ashamed.
I don’t know when I got over my phobia. As a young mother, I had to worry about my children more than myself, but I don’t remember clutching the boys and hiding in a closet. I was also medicated by that time. I remember when boys were about 2 and 4, standing on the porch staring at the dark, low-hung clouds and daring a tornado to come. I overcame my phobia the only way possible, by facing my fears head-on. Now, I have an almost irrational non-nonchalance over dangerous weather. I say, ‘Eh. It’ll be fine.’
Which is why I am contemplating this damn season now. I’ve spent so many years saying ‘Eh. It’ll be fine.’ to ward off the mounting mental anguish. I hunker down and wait for it all to be over. But this season of change has been even more paradoxical than usual.
Life can kick your ass sometimes. It’s not the first time I’ve had to live moment to moment—crawling through all the responsibilities, compartmentalizing to survive. But this fall, I’ve had my oldest son applying to colleges (which means I’m obsessing over the day he will be gone), I’ve been teaching a rewarding but mentally taxing literature class, and I’ve had to learn how to watch my youngest son get slammed and beat up on the wrestling mat. These are changes that I embraced. As hard as they’ve been, these are the good things I’ve been living for.
Then in October, I got wave after wave of news about family members with health problems. Heart attacks, biopsies, and emergency room visits. My aunt was told she needed a new heart and went through months of testing and run-around by insurance to get on the heart transplant list. My grandfather fell and shattered his knee; the emergency room failed to triage it correctly.
My Papa had surgery on his knee, but he died the day after the surgery; his heart was too weak. He was 89 years old, and he knew he was getting close to the end. He was adamant that the whole family get together for Thanksgiving this year. It was inked on all our calendars. Instead, we gathered for his funeral the week before Thanksgiving.
Two days after the funeral, my aunt got the call: they had a match. She had a heart transplant the next day.
It has been the damn season.
I can’t even say that these events have completely upended my life. My Daddy and his brothers, my cousins, and lots of other family members have dealt with these challenges on a day-to-day basis more than I have. It probably would have been better if I was expected to drop everything else in my life and be the sole person in charge of planning a funeral and settling an estate or spending hours at the hospital listening to doctors and updating family. I would have had my mind made up for me. Life would be telling me what to do. Instead, I’ve had to fight to sleep at night while worrying and dread waking up in the morning to face my grief and stress. I’ve had to continue with all the good stuff and the daily struggle knowing there was nothing I could do to stop the heartache.
Christmas is approaching, and it’s usually when I begin to settle into my medicated winter months, but this year I’m still on the freight train. I’m wondering when I’ll have the time to even process my grief and change. As always, I’m reminded of something ‘Saint’ Madeleine said.
“In times when we are not particularly suffering we do not have enough time for God. We are too busy with other things. And then the intense suffering comes, and we can’t be busy with other things. And then God comes into the equation: “Help.” And we should never be afraid of crying out, “Help.”
I could write another two thousand words on my struggle with faith. Suffice it to say that my stubbornness is pervasive.
In A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L’Engle writes about generation gaps. She says that the problem is that adults make maturity look sad and depressing—there is no more laughter or joy. Communication must happen with adults and children, but more importantly “we must make it evident that maturity is the fulfillment of childhood and adolescence, not a diminishing; that it is an affirmation of life, not a denial; that it is entering fully into our essential selves” (106).
There are stages that a person has to progress through to find a true sense of self.
“For the first time in our lives [we] find ourselves alone before the crucial problem of who, after all these years, we are. All the protective covering of the first three stages is gone, and we are suddenly alone with ourselves and have to look directly at the great and unique problem of the meaning of our own particular existence in this particular universe” (A Circle of Quiet, 113).
The trees are bare now. The winter sun barely fills the sky before it turns to dusk again. It is time to revel in the dark and gloom. I am suddenly alone with myself, and it’s time to contemplate all the existential questions. My mug of herbal tea that smells like Christmas cookies steams on the table next to me.
For Papa--
He comes every week
bringing some bread,
a treat,
and a 5 dollar bill.
Her hair in pigtails
bouncing up and down.
He grabs her little arms
and swings her around.
His big wet kiss planted on her nose.
“Ew, Papa. Don’t.”
She wipes it and runs
to fetch the drawing.
A balloon floating away
from the old man with glasses.
A little girl in a green dress
smiling in the corner.
“I made this for you.”
He comes every week
because she needs a steady hand to hold.
