Seasonal Affective Disorder Sucks!
Grey, blah, blobby Bunny, bereft of energy.
Well Fabulous Readers, it’s been awhile. As per my “interesting life,” Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), like the uninvited house guest that it is, has been ruling my roost. Yes I have PTSD, yes I have depression, yes I have fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue, and like a really bad ginsu knife commercial, but wait, there’s more!!!!!!! Enter really intense winter SAD!!! This is my second winter in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) and while I knew when living in California that I had a touch of winter SAD, I still preferred the falls and winters over the summer, for my Summer SAD is more loathsome. In the summer, the sun makes me feel oppressed, irritated, and miserable with a side dish of migraines and nausea. I hated the heat, I hated the bright, annoying sun and could never wait for summer to pass. Oddly, what weather-casters and most people declared as “nice days” were anything but nice to me. I have always preferred overcast skies and rain makes me happy and feel cozy and at peace. But I have come to learn that in the PNW, while I still like the rain and overcast days, which is good because there are a LOT of both, the extended rain and overcast and most definitely the nights that are longer, really deplete my energy. While I have the desire to have a life, get chores done, bathe with regularity, visit with my friends, and write, well, those things have really been curtailed, especially writing as my creative spark and drive has just not been there. My emotional brain does freak out and fear this is my new, forever level of functioning, but my intellectual brain and the woman who has gone through nine rodeos (long fuck gone are the days of saying “well, this isn’t my first rodeo!”), says “Chill the fuck out. This too shall pass. Don’t get your panties in a twist. Take a chill pill sister. Shut the fuck up buttercup,” and all the other helpful truisms my intellectual, wise crone brain shoots out faster than Dirty Harry with his .44, completely uninterested in the woebegone attitude and drama that my emotional brain can pump out. My beloved cats, Ku-Co, Mushroom and Bell Pepper, have been cared for, my chores and shopping eventually got done, I still saw my friends once in awhile and attended an occasional spiritual service, but mostly I was inert on my couch, binge watching shows and movies or scrolling through amusing shit on Facebook. And I ate. And I did not exercise. I did gain 10 pounds of the wonderful 27 that I lost last year. And I ate some more. And I did not write, and that is what pains me the most. My friends are wonderful and supportive and I was never in danger of loosing their love or friendship, so while I missed them, I did not trip on or stress over not visiting with them as much as I would have liked to. Retreating from people, isolating and avoiding is such a huge part of my PTSD and depression, so my social retreat felt very familiar. But in hindsight now as I am starting to feel better and come out of the 2022-2023 season of SAD, for which I apparently subscribed and bought front row tickets, I think that the SAD was the main driver in my isolation and profound lack of energy. And as I am the self-proclaimed Queen of Reframing, I have now accepted that I am One Who Hibernates and that profound lethargy and appetite are just part and parcel of the condition. Fighting it, bemoaning it and stoking it’s fire of misery only use more of my precious energy and make it worse. I know next season that I will be better prepared mentally and I know going into the season that I will not overcommit to things and I will not calendar taking on or starting any new projects. I have no guilt or shame over any of my “conditions” so that will not add to my SAD; it is what it is. That being said, like I did this season, I will eat a balanced diet, take my vitamins and supplements, walk a bit when I feel like it, use my light box every day, and enjoy the holiday season, because I do. We should not burden ourselves by fighting our conditions, beating ourselves up, or setting up unrealistic expectations—doing these things only makes our life worse and is not a good use of our emotional energy.
I really missed writing though. It was painful to not have the creative energy. Ideas would lazily meander up in my brain, like gas bubbles out of a mud flat, but any thought of actually doing something with the ideas fell with a dull, sickening thud and lay there like an old stinky dog who would look at me with rheumy eyes and whack it’s tail on the ground a few, slow times and then go back to sleep; couldn’t even raise its head, and it was just as pathetic and sad.
As I was beginning to feel just a tiny bit better and spurred on by open mic events that I really wanted to go to, I did manage to come up with these two poems. Prose is my usual go to, a craft that I love, but I do an occasional poem. These poems are evidence of my usual way of dealing with my less than desirable aspects of myself, through humor. If you too are One Who Hibernates, perhaps you will relate. Enjoy. (And Happy New Year, by the way.)
O Chicken Brain
I began to use the term “chicken brain” years ago when the time change and fall would occur. Like a chicken that will fall asleep when you tuck its head under its wing, even in the middle of the day, as soon as the sun would go down, I would become very fatigued and feel shut down.
(Sung to the tune of O Tanenbaum, and sing it you must!)
Poem Number 1
(Written 1/3/2023)
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, with faithless gloom unchanging
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, with raging appetite unfailing
Not only dark in winter’s cold
But also in the snow and oh so bold
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain how you consume me so heinously
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, how dusk makes me weary
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, how the dark makes my spirits leery
Each winter you bring me down, dullness in all the night
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, you make me give up all the fight
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, your brutalness it teaches me so
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, I fear your grip will not let go
That hope and love and faithfulness are precious things that I can possess
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, but you love to hide these things in your nest
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, my resilience forever lives within me
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, I will not let you defeat me
That the sun will come and shine, lifting my spirits, they will be fine
O Chicken Brain, O Chicken Brain, on your glorious carcass I will soon dine
The Chicken of Our Discontent
“Where did my energy go?”
An Ode to SAD
Poem Number 2
(Written 1/17/23)
You are the aptly acronymed SAD,
Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Like the gooey sludge of marshmallow fluff.
all-encompassing and sticky in your grasp, but alas
not sweet
Perhaps you are more like The Blob
as you seem to consume all of my energy
and you pray for these longer, dark nights
for they restrain me and make it oh so easy
for you to roll over me and with nary any resistance
But you are not red, like The Blob.
No, you are grey, lifeless and obscene
as if the asshole who thought grey should be the next cool color
to paint and decorate and manufacture every
exterior, interior and article of clothing in the last five years,
has infiltrated my brain
My butt and my couch
each apparently have magnetic poles
that are opposite
and they find each other extremely attractive.
I can almost hear the neat clicking sound they make
as one connects with the other,
and who am I to resist such a force?
Vague thoughts of doing something,
anything,
like bathing,
or visiting friends,
or having a life,
or the worst of all, of writing,
float idly in my brain
like a lazy, befuddled bird
meeting gentle puffs of wind, beckoning a journey to an interesting place
but being the least inclined
to even bother lifting a wing
My hypothalamus is clearly the most active part of my body
as the long, dark days
increase their cruelness through the waning of November and December
and the ever so slow creep of their waxing in January.
“Your energy is so low, my dear”
says my hypothalamus
“And I love you so.
I suggest that you eat, for surely this will give you energy,”
says that crafty bitch with a twinkle in her eye.
And my pantry, the co-conspirator, plays along
with its constant conversation
“Come, my friend,” it says
“Open me and rummage through my splendor.
All forms of sweet, and crunch, and tastiness
are to be found within.
Come back to me often,
heed my constant call
and you
may
feel
satiated.
(Or maybe not.)
But my yumminess, it cannot be denied.”
And like the compliant overachiever I am,
for who am I to disappoint,
pantry visits are frequent
and my jaw works with the
steady regularity
not unlike the constant, predictable pace
of an oil derrick.
And yet someone be lyin’
for as much as I visit my pantry
and as obediently as my gaping maw is stuffed,
no energy is forthcoming.
If only the hinges on the pantry could rack up
frequent flyer miles
for it feels like I have circumnavigated
the globe by now.
Oh SAD
you vex me so
with your inverse formula
of my lack of energy
and my expanding waist line
and minusing my life as it ticks away.
But perhaps
I should not think you an enemy
and a stealer of life
but embrace you as a part of the natural cycle
as humans think we can wrestle you to the ground and control you
you do remind us
that it is best to follow the natural order.
And I can feel my energy return
I am starting to move through the day, unencumbered
with no thought of “well that ain’t gonna happen”
and my appetite is decreasing, much to the dismay of my lonely pantry
So moving forward, as I pass my second winter in the great Pacific Northwest
I must embrace that,
I am,
one who hibernates.
I will not struggle with it
but like the magnificent bears who gain weight in that
marvelous celebration and maintenance of life through gluttony,
I will enjoy those morsels screaming at me from the pantry.
And I am not losing energy
but conserving it and building it up,
aided in my den of a couch by near total immobility
perfectly supplemented by binge watching,
(just as nature intended).
And my lack of motivation,
quelled and tampered by anhedonia
is not some form of a prison sentence,
but rather, like it sounds,
is just a nice place to visit.
SAD luring me into my pantry. “Look! Some green stuff and a tomato to make salsa. There are chips in the pantry!! Uuummm, crunchy and salty!!! Or how about some cookies? Candy perhaps? Raisin toast with cinnamon and sugar? A bowl of cereal? Anything. Anything for you my dear. Yes, yes make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—oooo, add some toasted marshmallows to that!!!! Gasp!! So good!!! Good job. See you again in an hour.”