Beating The Blues

"My mama used to say the blues is an ailment

that don't like no sunshine in the room."

-- Lisa Wingate, Talk of the Town

Vitamin D capsules 12-4-14

"... face the sun and imagine

you are inhaling its light ..."

-- Lynda Liu, "Summer Sun for Winter Blues:

Basking in the Sun for Depression?" WebMD

Hoo boy.

It's that time of year again, when the winter blues start stalking me.

That means it's time to fight back.

While there is debate about exactly which therapies and tactics are most effective for warding off winter depression, or Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), I'm leaving the debate to the experts and covering all my bases.

I'm taking my regular meds. Faithfully. That's a no-brainer.

Some say Vitamin D deficiency is the culprit. So I am also taking lots of Vitamin D.

I'm exercising.

Some say we get depressed in winter because we absorb less sunshine due to shorter days and more time spent indoors. So I am taking a long walk outside every day.

I also have two special lights that mimic sunlight, so I can plug those in and inject a little electric sunshine into my dark interior.

Depression is serious. Trust me. I know.

And winter is like jet fuel for depression.

Keeping that fucker off my back is a daily battle.

It's a good thing I have a few weapons of my own.






*Click here for more information about Seasonal Affective Disorder symptoms and therapies.

Columbine

"If I choose to look up and not down,

it's because I know what waits below."

-- Sally Brampton, 

Shoot the Damn Dog: A Memoir of Depression

Columbine flower 5-30-14

Columbine is one of my favorite wildflowers.

Happy, sun-drenched clumps of it run rampant along the south side of my house. They remind me of the funny stilt-walkers at a circus with their silly little belled, jester-hat blooms perched high atop long, leggy stems.

Up close, their demure, down-turned blossoms are a particularly delicate and lovely example of nature's wondrously deft hand at intricacy.

According to legend, the Columbine flower is the symbol for foolishness.

If you Google the word "Columbine" though, you won't get images of happy wildflowers. You'll get a startling barrage of words like massacre, rampage, psychopaths, shootings, murders, killers, monsters, bloodbath, horror, rage and tragedy.

Do an image search and you'll be smacked with an even more disturbing collage of photos depicting all of the above.

Sadly, ever since an April day in 1999, this happy, innocent wildflower that never hurt anyone is forevermore linked with unimaginable darkness.

It's the polarity of life, I suppose, the dramatic through-line of all existence, the tug and pull of opposite ends.

Good and evil.
Darkness and light.
High and low.
Happy and sad.
Love and hate.
Yes and no.
In and out.
Life and death.
Beginning and ending.
Now and never.
Here and gone.

I guess I'm writing this to remind myself (and you if you need reminding) that life's not all bad. Even the worst parts -- even the parts that seem unimaginably dark and hopeless when you're trapped in them -- have a flip-side.

Things get better eventually. Wounds heal, eventually. Even if eventually takes a lifetime.

At least I hope so.

I was reminded of this hope yesterday when I saw that despite the mud and blood spattered all over her good name (people used to name their newborn daughters Columbine. I don't have to do a baby names popularity search to know it's probably scraping the bottom of the barrel these days), my Columbine keeps blooming.

My Columbine keeps dancing in the sunshine.

Those silly little fool's caps keep bobbing in the Spring breeze.

Their heads may be bowed, their delicate faces may be down-turned, but they keep on reaching towards the sky.

Re-Emerging

"This world is clearly emerging before our eyes.

The shifts ahead, the opportunities ahead are massive."

-- Carly Fiorina

Tulip sprouts 3-21-14

"We all hope for breakthrough rebirth moments."

-- Dane Cook

Tulip sprouts (2) 3-21-14

"You raze the old to raise the new."

-- Justina Chen, North of Beautiful

Tulip sprouts (3) 3-21-14

A year ago at this time I was in a dark and scary place.

I'd kind of dropped out of my life. I'd gone underground, buried beneath the pressing weights of insomnia, anxiety and depression.

I'd stopped doing some things that, until then, had been very important parts of who I am. Most notably, I'd stopped acting.

In addition to my 365 days projects, I am also an actor. Theater mostly. But performing on stage and auditioning for roles, in my then-current condition, was out of the question.

In the last show I did, I was so exhausted and sleep deprived that I forgot my lines onstage more than once, which is definitely not something I am used to. During a scene in the show before that, my persistent facial spasm went apeshit and the other actor zeroed in on it, and it totally threw him off his game. In the green room afterwards, he teased me about it and I tried to play along with the joking, but it hurt. A lot.

I do most of my work an hour away in Cleveland, and there were nights I drove to and from rehearsals after 36 hour stretches of zero sleep, nights when I had no fucking business being behind the wheel of a car.

It all scared the shit out of me. It left me snake bit, gun shy, and super skittish about wanting to try again too soon, if at all.

The thing that scared me most, though, was how easily I was able to let go. I was growing ever more lackadaisical and apathetic about something that had once been a driving force and a passion. I didn't give a fuck. And even if I wanted to give a fuck, I didn't have a fuck to give. The passion, the drive, the hunger, the need -- vanished.

I was honestly starting to doubt whether I'd ever get back on the horse.

But yesterday I got a sensation that something was stirring again -- struggling to break the surface and re-emerge after its long, hard, dark dormancy.

I went on my first audition in almost a year and a half.

I think I did OK. I felt good about it. I was rested, calm, confident. The atmosphere felt familiar and right. My facial spasm was wonderfully obedient.

And whether I get the job or not is beside the point. The important thing is that I did it. I showed up. I went. I tried. I pushed back up through the packed earth and peeked out at a world I feared I'd never see again.

Guess what? It's still there.

So am I.

Antidepressants

"Be brave; be strong; take your pills."

-- Andrew Solomon,

  The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Self portrait, acrylic on wood panel 1-27-14