I’m in a relatively new relationship, and it’s had me feeling happy for many months in a row. I’ve been in a few relationships before, and I know by now that this feeling is both wonderful and transient. The euphoria of the first few months isn’t going to last for years on end.
So the last few mornings I’ve been waking with migraines and finding it hard to drag myself out of bed. The pain isn’t awful, because I take a daily medication that quite good at blocking it, but I definitely don’t feel good. At first I thought that that was why it was hard to get up, but then I began to recognize that slow, sleepy feeling that doesn’t quite want to leave no matter how much coffee you drink.
I don’t think I have particular reasons for being depressed, though once I am, my mind starts looking around to see what’s happening that I might pin it on. I do think that the shift when Daylight Saving started might have played a role. I’ve always been curious about whether the changes in light affect me, since I know they affect some people. I’m always the happiest when the days are long, but it’s not summer: spring and early fall. I love the light of the early morning and late afternoon. But since last Sunday, by the time I leave work, it’s dark.
I keep thinking I’ll buy a light box and see whether it works. While I’m at it, I should buy one for each of the boys, since they share my genes, and at least Martin seems to get more depressed during the winter. It’s hard to tell with his younger brother, Pete, since he does that thing of staying up most of the night talking to people from all over on the computer and then going to bed right around sunrise. He certainly doesn’t get a lot of sunlight that way, though we drag him out periodically for day trips. He makes vampire jokes.
I should probably think about seeing a therapist again, since I haven’t seen one for myself in quite a while. I get into this frame of mind where I think I’m fixed, that I can just coast along with my meds and my spiritual life, but my habits aren’t so good that I can’t get pushed out of alignment by a long period without having someone outside my skull to check in with about the things that tend to make me a little nuts. You know, climate change and people’s denial thereof, the horrible injustices meted out to some of the people in this world, the fact that my sons still don’t do their own laundry, and their father tells them I’m a neurotic mess. The things that incense people everywhere.
If I don’t take care of this, I can get stuck, sitting in my chair and going over the steps I should be taking but am not: exercising regularly, eating right more than I am, giving up my Coke habit quicker than I am. It’s just so frustrating to find myself back in a place that I remember being in fifteen, thirty, even forty years ago (I think my first major depression hit when I was sixteen…I was supposed to be excited about finishing high school and going off to college, and I spent the entire summer crying every day).
Antidepressants have generally made this all much more bearable than it was. I doubt that I will walk into the river with stones in my pocket. But still it sometimes sucks to have to get up. And I’m glad that I have a boyfriend who is not depressive, who always gets up early, and who will come back and get me if I go back to sleep.
Image Credit: Krista Mangulsone
Elisabeth Levien 