I have SAD! Never noticed before. Maybe Nanaimo triggered it. A couple weeks ago I had a vair grumpy day at work and I stepped outside and realized it was light outside. For the first time! (I leave work at 6.) And my mood just lifted. Freakishly so. And I thought: Well okay then... winter. I know SAD is supposed to be caused by lack of light, but there must be a corresponding COLDIES-SAD because cold depress the fuck out of me.
Since then it's been fairly warm, and I've been feeling better. Not all the time. Not when I'm procrastinating. But I'm getting back some of the energy needed to get past the procrastiones. I had 6 days off work this past week, and spent the first part facebooking and reading all the myriad of articles that fb triggers, and watching shows and such. Only in the last few days did I start to get things done. (And took an official Facebook Break. Coincidence?)
Miraculously, on the second to last day, I started to feel centered again. I made an appointment with a therapist, which I'd been procrastinating about. And though for years I've thought "one day I'll try yoga" suddenly I thought: This May. For my birthday.
One cold February day in 1989 (I assume it was cold--Edmonton in February) my grandfather dug out this copy of The Divine Comedy. He was a retired lit professor, always digging out bits of his collection for me.
Must be why this line popped into my head yesterday: Midway upon the journey of life.... Dante was describing being morally lost, looking to reach God; but he might as well have been describing a mid-life crisis.
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
Classic hero journey, with a goal, a guide, and a demon at the climax.
"Behold Dis, and behold the place
Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself."
How frozen I became and powerless then,
Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not,
Because all language would be insufficient.
Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself."
How frozen I became and powerless then,
Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not,
Because all language would be insufficient.
And treasure at the end...
And without care of having any rest
We mounted up, he first and I the second,
Till I beheld through a round aperture
Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;
Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.
___
4 comments:
Since my weight loss surgery I can no longer eat over my emotions and I have discovered I also have SAD. I come out of work to dark and cold and I cry all the way home.
Ridikalas.
Good discovery to make, if only cause one hopes one can prepare oneselves next winter! I already glanced through amazon at full spectrum lights.
The crying all the way home, not so fun. But then you can arrive home and write Beautiful Tragic Poetry.
;-) I hope you're starting to feel better!
That's why I chose a line from the Divine Comedy as the title for my midlife blog-- the whole dang thing is a midlife crisis. Great pictures and quotations from it. I read the Inferno years ago as an undergrad, but I didn't read the whole thing until a couple of years ago in grad school. I think I have SAD, too. There are days when I'm tempted to just get in the car and drive until I find sunshine. Especially in February.
I'm mid-life crisis-ing too! Let's us crise together.
I've never read the whole thing, but am thinking of doing so, those passages are so pretty.
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