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My Hibernation, AKA Seasonal Affective Disorder
by Tricia

Yesterday was one of those days. Nothing remarkable happened, good or bad. The weather was nice, for a change. Work was not very stressful - at least, not any more than usual. But still, I had this creeping, nagging feeling all day. Sort of a "why do I bother?" feeling. I think it's the Seasonal Affective Disorder beginning to creep in. We had three or four days of continuous rain, and though yesterday was sunny and bright, I think the buildup of not seeing the sun for more than half a week was getting to me.

I do not look forward to winter. I hate the shortened daylight hours, I hate that cold-to-the-core feeling like you'll never be able to warm up enough to be comfortable, I hate messy roads and gross brown slush leftover from pristine white snow. I hate all of the obligations that the holiday season brings, because its stressful and, inevitably, I am in no mood to be pleasant and make chit-chat. I love autumn, but there's always this cloud in the back of my mind because I know winter isn't too far off.

A few years ago, the SAD really got me. Between the winter season and some problems I was dealing with at work, I hit what was, for me, rock-bottom. I literally would come home from work and crawl into bed, where Scott would bring me dinner and I would watch TV until I fell asleep. There was usually crying involved. It was miserable for me, and I'm sure it was awful for Scott to not be able to do anything about it.

Since then, we have done a few things that have kept that from happening again. The main thing being that we switched the downstairs from being the TV room and moved the TV room up into the upstairs, main part of the house. In the past couple of winters I have spent much less time watching TV in the bedroom (read: hiding) because of the big TV out in the family room.

I think having the YMCA membership will make a difference this year - giving me something to focus on rather than going home and crawling into bed. And on days that I just can't bring myself to go to the gym, I have no excuse not to do SOMETHING, because we finally got our hands on a Wii Fit.

Regardless, yesterday I just had that feeling in the pit of my stomach that I hate. Wanting to just sleep through the next six months of cold and wet and dark. Wanting to crawl under the covers and hide from everything and everyone. But, I didn't. So that's a success right there, I suppose. Perhaps I should invest in a light box?

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