Let’s face it. This time of year in the midwest is far from enjoyable. The winter cheer has made it’s exit along with the holidays, and all we’re left with is skating rinks for roads, dead car batteries, and air that hurts our faces. Absolute necessity is the minimum requirement to leave the house and watching Netflix with someone other than yourself makes you feel like you’ve done enough socializing for the week.
We can all agree, we’d rather be on a beach somewhere. Honestly, we’d rather be anywhere but here, where the temperature is below zero for weeks on end. But for some of us, the “winter blues” means a little bit more than daydreaming about tropical vacations. For some of us, this season means welcoming back a version of ourselves we haven’t seen since last year; to my friends with seasonal depression, this one’s for you.
Although for as much as my life as I can remember I’ve become somber during the winter months, it didn’t become obvious to me that something was wrong until my freshman year of college. I guess the depression was much harder to ignore when I shared a room with basically 6 of my closest friends and had to explain to my roommate why I was no longer any fun. It was confusing to me how I could go from being the girl who was up for any adventure no matter what time of day, the girl who loved to exercise and hang out with friends, the girl who thoroughly enjoyed life, to the girl who just wanted to sleep all day. I had become unrecognizable to myself, and I definitely didn’t know how to explain that to my (relatively new) friends.
Thankfully I decided to give in and get some help. I even decided to talk to my roommate about what was going on with me and I gained my strongest support system in her to this day (S/O to you, the lovely Steph). Although it took me another year or two to become comfortable talking to other friends and family about my seasonal affective disorder, I’m no longer ashamed to talk about it. I get depressed in the winter months. I sleep a lot and socialize very little. I quit doing the things that I love, like running, yoga, and adventuring. It’s harder for me to write, which is ironic because my mind is often a clusterfuck of non-stop thoughts, often negative thoughts. Although I consider myself a fairly confident person, my insecurities come out to prey on anything they can find. I start to believe my friends think I’m boring, I start to believe I’m not as good as the other versions of me are, and that somehow this season turns me into an irrelevant human being. I feel sad if not numb most days, I prefer to feel sad because at least it feels like something. I have seasonal affective disorder, and that’s a part of who I am.
I think the most important thing I’ve learned in the past few years is that I am not me without my depression. Although for someone like me it’s easy to imagine myself without it (because for many months of the year it leaves me) there is no “me minus depression.” There is no pill or amount of counseling that will rid my body of this disorder, however, I have found my own ways to cope. I can’t say I’ve reached a place where I can completely welcome the season with open arms, but I have made peace with this part of me because without it the rest of me would not be. My moods or states of being cannot be separated into individual parts and still make sense just as my body cannot. I am one holistic being, and for that reason, I have accepted my seasonal depression, I’ve stopped trying to fight it and rather have embraced the season of cold, somber, lazy moods. I’ve stopped resenting the amount of time I spend watching Netflix, and have stopped hating myself for my moods because my mind is already full of enough negativity. I am not my only self when I am depressed, but I am not my whole self without it.
