Winter Sucks (Or How To Keep Seasonal Affective Disorder From Making You SAD)

Sweatshirt available at CatalogClassics.com
(Seriously! I found out about it 3 hours after this posted!)

It's been weirdly cold here in Central Texas for almost a week now -- we're in line for another hard freeze tonight. And it was cloudy and occasionally drizzly and gross for a few days. Cold, cloudy, gross. My allergies started acting up. I mostly just wanted to stay in bed with Netflix and the cats. It was hard not to get depressed until I dragged my sickly, shivering self through the mist to an open mic last night to perform some poetry & talk to friends and strangers alike in a cheap & cheerful bar.

Yes, the holidays are coming up, but along with Thanksgiving and whichever religious celebration you partake in (or don't) 'tis the season for Seasonal Affective Disorder. Whether it's because of the cold, damp ick that settles in for a while, because of allergies/colds/flu dragging you down, or because as more years pass, so do more loved ones, making the holidays feel lonelier, winter can really suck.

However, you're not powerless to make it suck less. These are things that have helped me during my long history of depression (which does tend to get worse during the bleak winter months):

1. Do something charitable. Take a few cans down to the local food bank, or donate something to a local toy drive. Gather up some things around the house that you don't need or use anymore and take them to Goodwill or a similar charity shop, and think of it as making room for incoming gifts. Find somewhere to do some volunteer work, which will not only help you feel like you're contributing to your fellow man but is an opportunity to have some human contact (see Tip #4).

I have a tiny Christmas
tree topped by a disco ball,
and I'm not sorry.

2. Don't stress out over having The Perfect Holiday. All the commercials say that this is the time of year for togetherness. Of course they also tell you that togetherness has to happen in a pristine house with an impossibly picturesque Christmas tree and a meal that took days to prepare though the hostess shows no signs of having been in the kitchen long enough to break a sweat. And of course all the presents have to be the newest, shiniest, most expensive toys -- even for grown-ups. Don't do this. Don't set expectations so high that your holiday will drown in disappointment like a piece of fudge accidentally dropped in the gravy boat. Don't try to out-Martha Stewart Martha Stewart if it just freaks you out. For the holidays, as for every other day, you do you.

3. Make homemade gifts for friends and family. Considering the state of the economy, this is almost a no-brainer. On top of that, people appreciate the time and effort that goes into making something yourself, whether it's a crocheted headband or a jar of pesto. And if you're fighting Seasonal Affective Disorder, spending time working on projects like this can help keep you busy and feeling purposeful.

4. Go out. Leave your house! Especially if you're living far from friends and family, the holidays can make isolation feel even more pronounced. Go to a coffeehouse and make conversation. Befriend your barista. Go listen to some live music and befriend a musician or aficionado. You're not alone in your loneliness, and your company can be a gift you offer to someone else who might be feeling as alienated as you are.

5. Accept some suckiness. When one of my best friends died when I was in my 20s, the holidays started to hurt because I missed being able to give her presents or be in her company at get-togethers. When one of my dear friends -- whose birthday is on Christmas Day -- passed away a couple of years ago, the holidays began to hurt more. The first Christmas after he passed, I didn't even put up a tree and sat like a zombie at my family's holiday dinner. The following year, I had a long discussion with myself and said, "Well, Christmas is just going to suck now, and you can either have a sparkly but sucky Christmas Day or an even more depressing, un-sparkly sucky Christmas Day. It's up to you." And I put up my tree and a few other decorations because I accepted that Christmas was going to be less pleasant than it had been before, and even if it would never be perfect, I could still try to make the most of it. As with Tip #2, I stopped being hung up on having The Perfect Holiday and aimed for the best holiday I could have, instead. I felt a lot better just knowing that I tried.

I have dealt with depression for most of my adult life, and I write this to ask others who might be suffering, particularly this time of year, to hang in there. Don't give up hope -- reach out to friends, family, even strangers/professionals if you find yourself unable to climb out of an abysmal state this season. This is part of a Facebook post I made after Robin Williams died, and I think it's a good reminder that if you're depressed, you are not alone and don't have to surrender to it:

Sometimes I think a certain degree of depression can be a gift -- it's the "strangeness in the proportion" that gives a person a different take on the world, that helps a person understand that this world is indeed temporary and that every one of is is going to die someday, though most people don't like to think about it and think you're weird if you do. That sense of urgency, and that sense of sorrow, can be fuel for a powerful fire. You look for the sweetness in life. You appreciate how rare and wonderful the beautiful and funny moments are. You run like hell from the darkness that's chasing you, toward humor and beauty and light. I think that's why it turns out that so many funny people are depressed -- we're not joking, we're fighting for our lives. And if you're lucky, really lucky, you can find a balance between the darkness and the light. You can stand on the edge, keep that fire burning, without getting sucked into the blackness. But sometimes you lose that balance. Sometimes you get too tired to keep running. And if you don't ask for help, if you don't find help, that's the end of you. But there is help, folks. There are friends. There are professionals. There are meds if you want/need to go that route. Every day that I wake up and find one thing that touches my heart or makes me laugh is a "fuck you" to the disease that could have taken me but didn't. Today I'm grateful that I found help -- the best group of friends a person could hope for, wonderful therapists, meds when my heart was too heavy for even these kind people to lift, and lifestyle changes that have made the struggle more manageable. When I find myself balancing on the edge, I don't stand there -- I dance.