The Winter Blahs
Picture taken by me at Sleeping Bear State Park in Caseville, Michigan Summer 2017
It is unseasonably warm here in Michigan both yesterday and today. Usually this time of year we are buried in snow, freezing and miserable. Yesterday and today it was warm enough that it actually rained both days. It is dreary, dark and damp and honestly still miserable. It leaves me dreaming of warmer days, wishing I was in my camper with my husband enjoying the outdoors.
Spring seems ages away when you get to this time of year in Michigan. The temperature is supposed to drop again tonight, so yay...ice. I'm missing warm weather and sunshine and the winter blahs have a firm hold on me. The fatigue and the blues get to you and seem like they will never let go. I suffer from severe episodes of depression and weather like this always makes it even harder to function. I know many people don't understand what it's like to have depression. They may have been sad or down at points in their lives, but never had a serious, reoccurring disorder that makes it super difficult for them to do just about anything.
I am a high functioning depressive, meaning I don't exhibit symptoms like some others might. I get up and go to work every day, I don't spend my time curled up in a ball crying. Even though inside I feel like doing those things. I'm not saying those things are wrong if that is something you do with depression, it's just not how I handle mine. Most of the time, I suppress what is going on inside me. It builds and builds and finally I just break down. I continue to do everything that I must on a daily basis and eventually have to deal with what's going on inside me.
It's hard for me to talk about, I rarely speak to anyone about my symptoms/feelings on it. Growing up, and I have had this most of my life, my family didn't understand. My mother always yelled at me to go outside and get out of my room. She thought I just needed to move around and get some sunshine. Which was probably part of why I deal with the depression the way that I do. As I got older, I learned to quietly "suck it up" and handle it myself until I broke down which was usually crying, alone in the bathroom so no one would hear while I ran the shower.
There was a particularly bad episode when my son was young and I was still a stay at home mom and my husband came home from work to find me just a slobbering mess. He didn't know what to do for me. He asked if I needed to go to the hospital or something. That scared me to think that I might have to be locked away in a hospital somewhere. I had never sought any kind of help for my depression because honestly when I was younger, it wasn't something that was spoken about. The thought that I might have depression never even entered my head. Of course I had heard it before, but it's talked about more openly now than it was then.
Finally when I turned 40, I sought help after dealing with this my entire life. I went to a therapist and I got on medication. I am not a big medication person and I wish that I didn't need to take them and maybe someday I won't. But for right now, it helps to take the edge off of the worst of it. I guess my point to all of this is that if you are struggling with depression, don't wait. At least go and talk to someone. Even for me, who has the hardest time opening up to people, it helped to have an impartial person there to just tell them that you are struggling.
I don't think my husband still knows how to react when I have an episode, he tries to make me feel better, he wants to help and he doesn't understand what "makes me depressed". I tell him there's nothing he can do, it just is. There is no reason for the depression it's just something that happens. It's part of me and my chemical makeup. I fully believe that I will struggle with this for the rest of my life, but at the same time, I have hope that it will get better. As I get older, I am finding better ways to cope with my depression. You have to find that balance for yourself. What works for me, might not work for you but keep looking until you find it. It's out there.