Seasonal Depression Has Entered the Chat

Lately I’ve been feeling a little too seen by that one scene in Parks and Rec—the one where someone asks, “Andy, are you okay?” and he answers with a cheerful “Oh I’m fine!” followed immediately by a dissertation-length list of symptoms that are… not fine.

That’s pretty much my energy right now.

I’ve slid into my annual Seasonal Affective Disorder phase—SAD season, emotionally and meteorologically. The sun taps out at 3:45 PM and so do I. Everything feels just a little bit harder, a little bit heavier, and a little bit “I would simply like to hibernate, please.”

I’m tired constantly, except at night, when my brain decides that’s the perfect time to replay every mistake I’ve ever made or just toss and turn endlessly as I beg my brain to shut off without taking another Tylenol PM. I also keep forgetting to eat—not intentionally, not dramatically—just in the “oh look, it’s 4 PM and I haven’t had lunch because time is fake now” sort of way.

My usual passions and projects are still technically on the shelf, but they feel like they’re behind a pane of glass. I can see them, I just don’t have the emotional reach to grab them. Everything is… dimmer.

And here’s the important part:

This is not a post about how I fixed it.

I did not wake up at 5 AM for sunrise journaling (not that it would help, the sun doesn’t peak over the horizon until 7:30 or so right now) or reorganize my entire life or drink a green smoothie that cured my brain chemistry. I have not overcome this. I am, quite simply, identifying it. Like a nature documentary, but for my mental health.

Sometimes you don’t have a solution.

Sometimes you just have honesty.

And honestly? I’m not doing great. And that’s okay to admit. I knew this would happen when I moved further North, to a country that is practically defined by cold, wet, and dreary.

So this is me naming it, saying it out loud, and sending it into the world because pretending to be fine is somehow more exhausting than actually being unwell.

If you’re also unintentionally fasting through the afternoon and feeling like a human houseplant in desperate need of sunlight: hi, I see you. No advice here—just solidarity. Winter brains unite.

Spring will get here when it gets here.

Until then, I’ll be over here trying to remember that eating lunch is, in fact, a normal thing humans do.

And if anyone want to donate to my fund to buy a full spectrum light and some vitamin D supplements, feel free.