January sucks.

This is the hardest part of the year for me.
I suffer from S.A.D.(Seasonal Affective Disorder)
What that basically means is that the state of my mood is directly related to the amount of sunlight to which I am exposed.  Thus, during the winter months when there is less sunlight available (and I see virtually none of it due to my office job and work schedule) my mood falls lower and lower.  It is never a good time of year for me.

Last year, after avoiding the suggestion since my teens, I finally broke down and bought a full spectrum “sun lamp” that I sit in front of for 15 minutes up to two hours a day.  It helps and I would never live without one now but it still doesn’t make all of the SAD symptoms go away.

Anyway, I am finding myself in that sullen/depressed/temperamental space again this year but I’m trying harder to fight my way out. 

Exercise helps.
Spiritual reflection helps.
And unfortunately b/p is a crutch that gets me through as well.

Yeah, so I b/p’d last night.
Me, four slices of pizza, and two glasses of wine spent a little time together.
It could have been worse but I count that fact as the slimmest of victories.

But I digress…

I feel utterly lonely these days.
My family is in Michigan.
I have only one friend who lives in the area and she is busy with a budding career, two sons, a bi-polar ex-husband, and a fiancé.

M is the most wonderful husband in the world but I find myself getting irritable in his mere presence and unable to tell him at all how I am feeling.

My sister, my best friend, is back in Michigan and struggling to watch her chosen career industry die (newspaper journalism), support the co-workers that she loves and has worked with for over a decade, and raise my beautiful niece and nephew.  She is a rock to so many of her others friends that are struggling with life issues that I just don’t want to put anymore on her plate of woes.  So I don’t tell her anything either.

My mom is an amazing woman who now in her 60s is finally taking care of herself, her health, and having the time of her life providing full-time daycare for my niece and nephew.  She also has 9 (yes, you read that right) sisters who are in various stages of life that she laughs with and counsels with constantly.  I don’t want her worry about me.

Those people are all I’ve got really and I feel tremendous guilty if any of them think for even a moment that I am unhappy so I put on the smiley face, listen to all the things that are going on in their lives and keep my mouth shut about the demons screeching in my skull.

The result?

I feel hollow and alone and like a burden.

Then this morning as I’m driving to the train I hear a story on NPR about people in Haiti struggling to survive without shelter and food.

Without food.

Families struggling to give whatever food they can find to their children, neighbors joining together to feed the elderly survivors, children who have lost all of their family members….

And I feel even more guilt for being so selfish and narcissistic as to throw up pizza last night and worrying about a few calories when there are those who have nothing.

Nothing.

Ugh.  I’m sorry for this morose post girls.

I obviously need a lot more coffee...and probably to get laid asap.  lol

Bottom line:  If I didn’t have you guys, I don’t know what I’d do.

Stay lovely.
xoxoxoxox