So this is what nine volts of sunshine feels like. My 40-watt globe is burning as brightly as its little filaments will allow, and I have my face turned to its meager glow in unabashed desperation.
This is the only sun I can find, and if I have to face one more day of this desperately grey and cold winter I will abandon all my responsibilities and take a one-way flight to the equator. Don’t think for a moment that I’m joking.
It’s official: I must suffer from SAD – seasonal affective disorder, the gloom that starts to descend in autumn and culminates in sheer despair at the apex of a cold, grey winter. Whereas once I delighted in the changing of the seasons, the crisp autumn tang and cooling nights, now my heart starts to sink at the first sign of yellowing leaves and shorter days. By now, well dug-in by a relentlessly grey Melbourne winter, I’m ready to check myself into a clinic.
When people unguardedly ask how I am, I find myself actually answering the question: telling them how awful I am finding this winter, the cold, the wind, and I can see the tight smile forming on their face as they carefully back away from the wild-eyed woman ranting before them.
I frantically scan the sky for breaks in the clouds. I have the weather bureau’s rain radar tagged on my bookmarks bar. I note each morning the top temperature forecast for Darwin and I close my eyes and see in my mind’s eye the brilliant aqua of the Arafura Sea.
I think I’m in trouble.
It’s been a long time coming. I remember my mother many years ago remarking on the awful grey gloom that is the Melbourne winter: as if a lid had been drawn over the world. Our family moved from Bendigo to Melbourne when I was very little and my mother often noted that while a Bendigo winter could be a bitterly cold one, there was always the saving grace of a high blue sky. Here, it was relentlessly grey.
The SAD checklist is useful and mental health websites are quite optimistic about the ways that this condition can be dealt with. Light therapy is one way, hence me cosying up to my bedside lamp (you can actually buy something called a SAD lamp, which is a bit … well, sad really); psychotherapy (count me in) and medication (ditto). I imagine getting the hell out of this winter for a bit and taking a holiday somewhere warm and blue might help as well.
It’s fascinating how much more we understand the importance of light for our health. Leaving aside the complexity of the mixed messages about the need for direct sun (something I ranted on here a few weeks ago) we now have a much more sophisticated understanding of the role that morning light exposure plays in our development of melatonin, serotonin and cortisol and the effect this has on our ability to sleep, regulate our moods, control our weight and our stress levels.
I know as the days get a little longer and the prunus starts to bud and burst my mood will lift a little, too, but I’ve decided I can’t wait that long.
I’m on the net comparing cheap Pacific Island flights and buying bathers online. It’s for my mental health, you know.
