Day 16

This blog was conceived during a particularly miserable blustery day this past winter. Everyone I met had eyes faced forward, looking to Spring. But Spring, although it may bring relief from the cold, may actually be worse for despair. Suicides peak, not at the December holidays, but in March and April.

Here's a blogger at Beliefnet writing about her springtime struggles:

There’s something oddly comforting about the misery of winter, and a camaraderie with even those who aren’t normally depressed. When the sun comes and wrenches those lilacs from the earth and families and friends and couples all play frisbee and have picnics and talk about how happy they are, it’s almost too much to bear. And then that fact–that I’ve waited and prayed for spring and now I can’t even enjoy it–makes me feel like an ungrateful wretch in addition to completely alone and raw and skinless. The bad-thought pile-on. Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/freshliving/2009/04/springtime-depression-is-touching-my-soul.html#ixzz1JcuWJl77

I remember, years ago, that one of the lowest days of my life was drenched in sunlight. Living in South Florida after my first marriage ended, there was one absolutely gorgeous day in a seemingly endless cascade of them, the sound of happy people from the beach and the pool streaming into my apartment with all that sunshine. And I though to myself, "This is vampire sadness. I'm not welcome in the light. I belong in here, hiding myself."

The point of all this is that the emergence of spring can be a mixed blessing. The green things and the warmth and the sunshine may feel like deliverance or damnation to one whose soul is arid and bleak. If you're feeling the latter, or someone you love is, I think the writer above has it right:

And here’s a reminder that a friend simply and potently texted me yesterday when I asked how I could possibly be depressed in this yummiest of weather: “You’re loved,” he said.

Try to remember that.

Amen.

(photo courtesy of Paul Botu)