Shriek though I may, all I hear are the howling winds in the fallow season.

I've made no secret of the fact that I find winter a challenging time of year. For a while, I put forth a valiant effort to appreciate it, knowing that without it, the planet would quickly become inhospitable to mammalian life. And as we incrementally ratchet up the global thermostat with all our shortsighted misdoings, we come ever closer to seeing the devastation of a winterless world. I am fully prepared to acknowledge this theoretical necessity of the fallow season. Nonetheless, I don't do so well at this end of the calendar.

In previous years, winter has brought along a bad case of the weepies. I'd hermit myself up as much as possible, so as to not make anyone else have to put up with my inconsolable sniveling over... my fucked-up brain chemistry. For that is what Seasonal Affective Disorder is. I'm imagining most folks understand the mechanics of this much-publicized malady by this point, but in case you don't, here's how it works: the brain requires a certain amount of sunlight to create serotonin, it's natural happy juice. When the days get short in the winter, your retinas don't register adequate sunlight and your brain produces reduced levels of serotonin, thus goading your mood to take a big ol' careening dive, with squelchy, liquidy splat at the end. And then, as the days begin to lengthen in the spring, sufferers will often experience a lovely giggling euphoria as their serotonin levels climb back up to normal. Now, I know that sounds a little like bipolar disorder or something-- but it's far more predictable, and, in most cases, nowhere near as severe. A bipolar depressive state can become suicidal and a bipolar manic state is sometimes crazed beyond recognition of natural consequences-- and from what I understand, sufferers cycle through these flailing polarities in patterns that have nothing to do with orbit of the planet. And I know, for sure, that my own issues are no where near so extreme.

Treatments for S.A.D. are still pretty limited. You can go to your nearest pharmaceutical company rep-- er, I mean, health care provider-- and get some drugs-- usually Effexor, Paxil or Welbutrin. Or you can buy a Happylite. Disinclined to pollute my system with synthetic chemicals as I am, I turn on my own Happylite while I'm getting dressed in the mornings. It provides an incremental improvement, perhaps, but let me tell you: turning on a lamp ain't no kinda cure.

I still feel like crapity-poo-- *most* of the time. This year's affliction seems to have brought a whole host of new experiences, though. As I said, winters past have left me tearful and blubbering. But this year, the only thing that seems to make me cry is trying, frustratedly, to put words to my generally pisspoor mood. I seem to be stuck in this wretched, limbic status that is both restless and stagnant. Mornings, it takes a concerted act of will to wrest me from my bed, another to pick out work-appropriate clothes (i.e., not lounge pants and tank tops), and yet another to don coat, scarf, boots, and earmuffs so as to prevent my ass from freezing off on the mile-long walk to the metro. Actually getting out the door? Daily, it's a minor miracle that that happens at all. And then when I get home at night, I can barely peel myself from the sofa to do simple things like putting the water on for tea, changing out of those skeptically chosen work clothes, and, well, getting up to go pee. And writing? Pfff. Not even an option-- just a nagging placard decreeing that I'm not living up to my potential swinging in the place where the writing should go.

And though I'm nightly rotting into my furniture, my head spins with all am I not doing. Day and night, I am not writing, I am not applying to Ph.D. programs, I am not being productive enough at work, I am not paying my bills, I am not grocery shopping, I am not replacing watch batteries, I am not making plans for dinner with friends, I am not managing the dust bunny situation in my house. But I sure am *thinking* about all that crap. Thinking about -- and not doing-- chores has begun to feel like a full-contact sport. My lower back aches with it. And though I am that restless and that bored, the will to remedy the situation evades me.

But this year's shiny new S.A.D. symptom seems to be the fury. I may generally be a spunky girl (some might even say "spicy"), but I'm not really an irritable or angry girl. I'll get righteously indignant now and again. And I'll even get spouting-off cunty every once in a while. But snappish, edgy, cranky and annoyed? Unceasingly? I hardly know myself.

Regularly, I've busted myself swearing under my breath at people who don't know the stand-on-the-right-walk-on-the-left metro station escalator rule. I've also cursed out my purse strap about a hundred times-- the damn thing is constantly sliding down my shoulder when I'm wearing a heavy coat and, for some reason, that really ticks me off. And if you are a boy in my life right now, heaven help you. If I haven't said something abjectly, childishly horrible to you in the last couple of months, you clearly haven't been hanging around me enough. None of you seem to have done anything that I would perceive as an affront, so I don't know precisely why it's you boys who are on my nerves so much. But you are. Just so you know, you weren't imagining it when you thought, maybe, I might be looking at you like I wanted to punch your face in. I did. I really ... did.

I'm sorry. The amorphous, unnameable crazy made me think it.

And that's the thing about S.A.D.-- though it affects my emotional equilibrium first and foremost, it still feels acutely physical. Last summer, when I was changing jobs, buying a condo and moving into said condo, I was really stressed out. My mood was erratic because my life was erratic. Something was actually wrong. But with this, nothing's amiss at all. I've settled into both job and home. Most of my relationships feel at least tentatively peaceful-- even the one with one the person from whom I'm vaguely estranged. And even in this precarious economy, I feel secure in that my day job is not only necessary, but its necessity is expanding. Seriously. Not a damn thing is wrong.

And yet I feel... crazy. I wish there was a less dramatic word for it, but I can't think of it. Irrational, maybe. Like I just can't quite get a hold of my own senses. Like they're vibrating in a wind tunnel and keep blowing up past my grasp. Like the crazy is a gory, little underskin carbuncle and if I could just dig my thumbnails deep enough under it, I'd be rid of it in a phantasmagoric splush of gunk. But I can't, so it continues to rankle. Stupid fucker.

But it's March. Blessed be March. Last March, I wrote 20 blog posts as the lengthening days spurred me into an exuberant streak of productivity. I have hope for this month, I really do. I so prefer being nice to people who are undeserving of my wrath. I'm sure anyone who's been putting up with me lately is eager for the first flush of le printemps as well.

Not much longer now, mes amis.

de facto hiatus

It's not that I really have intended to stop writing. It's just that it seems I can't. I have ramblings I'd like to express and films I'd like to discuss. But I can't.

As I think I mentioned a few posts back, this Seasonal Affective crap has really thrown me for a loop this year. And yes, it's a real thing. Palpably real. And miserable.

Actually, it hasn't been this bad since my freshman year of college, when I'd just moved to New Jersey and the snow didn't ever completely melt from the middle of October until the beginning of May. I really thought I was losing my marbles. The only comparable experience I've had was when I decided it would be a good idea to screw around with my usually very evenly regulated hormones (i.e., I went on The Pill for 6 months-- never again!).

So, nothing's wrong. I don't make enough money and my job alternates between frustrating me and boring me and, of course, I seem to be entangled in some typically unconventional relational situations (or, at least, I'm entangled in my own head. Participation of others is subject to interpretation)-- but none of that is any different from the usual year-round rhythms of my life.

But I can't stop crying. I wake up and I feel ok, even though my sleep cycles are even more out-of-whack than usual (typical fire-sign insomnia, exacerbated) and then I get into my car to drive to work and the only thing preventing me from falling apart is the simple vanity that I don't want to show up at work with mascara rings under my eyes. Or I get to work and manage to hold it together through the morning hours, but I soon find myself staring spacily at the grid on my office ceiling, willing the tears away (I will not cry at work. I will not cry at work. I will not cry at work.). Or, I proudly soldier through an entire work day and then I collapse into passionate, unweildy sobs as I navigate Georgetown traffic on my way home.

And still, nothing is ACTUALLY wrong, other than my brain chemistry being all half-mast and off-kilter. About the only reprieve from feeling sad that I've been getting is when I feel frustrated and annoyed that I'm so sad all the time. Frustration and annoyance are clearly preferable to this other overwrought, heightened, interminable sadness. Clearly.

Either way, I feel crazy.

And it doesn't help that it's just barely mid-December and the DC area has already seen a significant snowfall and another is predicted for this weekend. Nor does it help that I can't actually remember the last sunny day we had here.

Nor does it help that I arise in the dark, leave my apartment shortly after sunrise (spending a grand total of 25 or so seconds outside as I walk to my car), park in a garage underneath my office building, elevator up, work all day in an office with no windows, elevator down, drive home after dark and spend another 25 or so seconds walking from my car to my apartment. Clearly, three quarters of a minute is not adequate time for my retinas to register enough sunlight to create a sanity-sustaining serotonin level in my puny frenzy of a brain.

I am a mole-rat.

Most of the time, I can manage a little yogic trick. If I adopt the stance of the objective spectator in relation to my own self, I can watch myself feeling so sad, realizing it's a physiological sort of sad (as opposed to a psychological sort), and muster enough sense to realize that I'll weather the storm-- but even this variety intellectual detachment doesn't much help me turn off the friggin' waterworks. It's merely a management tool and does little in terms of solving the problem.

So, thank god the winter solstice is only 10 days away. I can only hope that, as the days begin to lengthen, I'll be able to think like a person again-- and maybe write something of substance.

Until then, fair reader(s).