 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| January 27, 2010: The Winter Blues It’s that crappy time of year again, known throughout the universe as ‘January.’ Depending on where you live, it might not be so bad. But out my window here in Utah, it looks very grey and gloomy and it’s impossible for me to escape the blahs of the long, dreary months of winter. They seem to go on forever. Just a month ago, the airwaves were saturated with songs like “Winter Wonderland” and “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” The song running through my head right now is “California Dreamin” by the Mommas and the Poppas. You likely know the tune and its key line, “California dreamin’ on such a winter’s day.” If only there were palm trees out my window and a nice ocean breeze wafting in through an open window somewhere in my cliff-side beach house in Half Moon Bay. But, alas, that has not been my lot in life. So I have to make due with a screensaver filled with photographs of my most recent trip to the coast in July of last year. Getting depressed during this time of year can happen so subtly that a person may not even notice that he or she is no longer leaving the house, is sleeping longer hours than usual, no longer has any interest in the things that he or she once found so captivating, or is just living day-to-day with an underlying feeling of uneasiness or discontent. I live with depression year-round, but it is especially distressing during this time of the year. The skies are overcast as if a ceiling has been placed over the valley, and the air quality outside is the equivalence if inhaling smoke from a campfire. The sun comes up late and goes to bed early, so even it is depressed. There are very few outdoor activities during this time of year. Of course you can go skiing or snowmobiling: but there isn’t much beyond that for a soul to do. Mostly, I find myself scraping for excuses to get out of the house and only a handful of indoor activities come to mind. I could go to a movie, but then again, I can watch a movie here at home as well. I can’t go to the park or go camping…and after a while all of this indoor living starts to drive me just a little bit more insane than my kids already think I am. This morning as I drove the kids to school during a rather nasty snowstorm, I listened intently while the morning DJs I like to listen to interviewed a guest who was a specialist in the area of S.A.D. or Seasonal Affective Disorder. Basically, it is a form of depression that is brought on during the long winter months of November through March and causes some people to hibernate or all but completely stop functioning normally. Refreshingly, all of his suggestions were medication-free. We live in an era where everything that ails us has a pill available to cure whatever it is. We are so overly medicated that I have to wonder if any of it is truly making a difference. Don’t get me wrong: I myself am bipolar and take medication for it. It is a necessity for me and one that I’m sure my family appreciates as well. However, I do believe that doctors are freely throwing antidepressants at just about anybody who walks into his or her office and says that they are sad and can’t seem to shake it. And that kind of irresponsibility can only lead us to believe that there is nothing we can do outside of medication to change our circumstances in life. The guest on the radio show suggested things like light therapy (sitting under/near an ultraviolet light for a few minutes at a time throughout the day), cognitive therapy (the most effective, yet most difficult, treatment that involves changing the way a person thinks by helping him or her to become more conscious of any negative thought patterns that perpetuate depression and change them to uplifting, positive thoughts), and also by just surrounding oneself with positive, cheerful things like photos, music, and movies that encourage good feelings. To make matters worse for the S.A.D. person, we live in a very negative, pessimistic world. Just watch the news! You practically have to dig for a positive, uplifting story anymore because the media vampire prefers to feed itself on the dark, intense misery that seems so prevalent in the world. To be happy these days requires conscious effort. It requires choosing to be happy, rather than just sitting around and waiting for happiness to fall out of the sky and land on your head. But depression is different than routine sadness in that it has the very real ability to take such choices away. Anyone who lives with serious depression knows how hard it can be to get out of bed, make something to eat, leave the house, talk on the phone, or socialize in any way. It’s like running in deep, muddy water. And when you have to do that every day, you eventually get so tired that you stop where you are and just stand in the dank, stagnant water that you find yourself trapped in with absolutely nowhere to go or any idea of how to get yourself out of it. So you just stop; you shut down. And nothing else matters. To emphasize my point, I will use the example of an argument my wife and I had just a couple of days ago. I typically sleep in the day out of necessity while Joanna is awake with the baby and the rest of the kids are at school. Well, on this particular day, I woke up around three in the afternoon feeling rather sad and irritated without any real reason that I could think of. In the next room, I could hear the sounds of kids laughing and goofing around, typical noise after a long day at school. The house was a mess and, despite having been asked nicely—twice—the offspring had yet to get their daily chores taken care of. Joanna then walked into the bedroom, clearly annoyed by the kids’ lack of motivation and reeling from an entire day of listening to baby Dylan scream, and started to complain about the messy house to me. I took a deep breath, suggested that she calm down, and made it clear that I didn’t want things escalating into an all-out war. It was obvious that neither of us was in a good enough mood to deal with the situation in the other room. And I wasn’t about to go play the bad guy because I was still busy shaking the cobwebs out of my hazy, sleepy brain. So Joanna took care of it. She walked out into the kitchen fully intending to ask nicely once more, and found all of the children sitting around and still doing nothing. You can guess what happened next. Joanna raised her voice, the kids stopped laughing, and I got angry because now there were ugly feelings floating through the house just minutes after I had made it clear that I wanted calm. The next thing I knew, I was griping and complaining to Joanna about the way I thought she should have handled things, and soon we were angry at each other. So there we were: the kids mad and upset, and my wife and I fighting with each other. It was cloudy out and cold; and Joanna had spent the entire day in the house. I was still sleepy and irate and, if I had had my way, would have slept all day long, messy house or not. The only smiling, laughing face in the house belonged to Dylan, who was oblivious to the situation and was busying himself with chewing and slobbering all over my cell phone. The arguing came to a head at the dinner table, which ended with Joanna leaving the room and the kids silently eating while I glared at everybody. By eight in the evening, I had had enough. So, despite the fact that I didn’t have to be at work until nine, I grabbed my things and left. When I got to work, I had an email from Joanna that in essence accused me of this and that and had a sole purpose to prolong the argument and all of the bad vibes that were now prevalent within everybody in the family (except Dylan, who was still busy talking to his peeps). I was tempted to fire back an email at her, but something made me stop. So I let it drop and tried to concentrate on my job. As the night wore on, I pondered the entire situation. What had gone wrong? How on earth did such a mundane day escalate into something so volatile? When I got home in the morning, Joanna was still upset, I was still upset, and the kids seemed to have recovered nicely from their trauma. I slipped into bed and drifted off, only to awaken just five hours later. I couldn’t sleep; I felt sick inside. I didn’t want anybody fighting anymore. I just wanted my family back intact. I wandered out into the living room where I found Joanna sitting on the couch reading and looking very sad. Dylan was happily occupied in his playpen and the other kids had yet to be picked up from school. It was obvious to me that Joanna wasn’t in any condition to go get them, emotionally or otherwise (she was still in her pajamas). And then it donned on me: It wasn’t about chores or raised voices at all. We were dealing with depression. What had happened between Joanna and me that had snowballed and decimated the good feelings in our family, was all about the fact that the two of us had been cooped up in the house for days; and the weather was cold and forbiddingly dismal. We were sad, bored, and stuck in the same proverbial muddy water with each other with no way out. After some discussion, I (nicely) asked Joanna to be dressed when I came back from picking up the kids. When I came back to the house, she was prettied up and somewhat lively as the children and I spilled into the living room, the kids having returned to their usual joking-around-and-laughing demeanors. I told the kids to behave themselves while Joanna and I went out to run some errands. The kids seemed more than happy to see us leave and readily agreed to watch the baby. I didn’t know where we were going or what we were going to do. But just stepping outside that door and getting onto the car felt like a whole new world had opened up for us. Once on the road, the two of us talked and joked about this and that and rediscovered the fact that we had gotten married for a reason. She even admitted to liking me again. We ended up going to Burger King where I ordered a hamburger, and Joanna ordered two tacos (yeah…I didn’t know Burger King had tacos, either). Then we stopped at the pet store to buy crickets and guppies for the family frog to eat. Then we went to the grocery store and picked up a gallon of milk. Then we went home again. The entire time we were gone, we laughed and talked as if nothing had happened. It was as if a heavy, wet blanket had been lifted off of us and all of the sadness had dispersed with it. Things, of course, have been good since and the good feelings that usually permeate our humble home are back in abundance. We needed that time together; and we needed to get out of that house and into the world for a little while, even if it just meant doing something very routine and mundane. So I’m staying away from the news for a while; I’m going outside especially when I don’t want to; and I’m going to make a greater effort to see that those that I love most—those within the walls of my own home—do the same thing. Before long, spring will be here and the sun will be shining down on my face once again. I like to keep that little thought in the front of my mind, especially when the ‘winter blues’ come huffing and puffing at my door and threaten to blow my house down. --Steven (c) 2010 Steven Grames |