I thought
about changing the name of this post, coming up with some creative and catchy
title. But I decided not to. Why sugarcoat things? Springtime
depression. It is what it is.
According to
statistics, about one-quarter of the people reading this will have personally
experienced some kind of depressive episode in their lifetime, and nearly all
of you will know a close friend or family member who has. We don’t talk about it much, but it is real.
Most people
think that depression is most commonly experienced during the winter and at Christmas. False. There is actually a marked decline in
suicides before any major holiday. In
fact, December and January have the lowest number of suicides each year. When are the most? April
and May.
There are
theories upon theories about why this might be.
Google “Springtime Depression” and you’ll find a heap of articles
discussing the subject. Read some of
them. It’s fascinating. Theories range from social disaffectedness to
increased inflammation due to pollen.
The bottom line is that nobody really knows for sure why this happens,
but it does.
In his poem,
“The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot writes:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
The speaker
is basically contrasting the spring and winter, noting that the emerging life
of spring stands in stark contrast with the comfortable numbness of
winter. Ever since I first read this
poem, these lines have stuck with me.
They seemed so odd, so contrary to nature. But knowing what I know now, well, maybe they
aren’t so out of place.
When I was a
kid, the best playground in town had one of those really big spiral
slides. I loved that slide. It was huge
and metal and scalding hot when the sun was shining. But if you could manage to slide down,
crouching on your shoes so as not to scorch your legs, you whipped around at
least 3—maybe 4—spirals. Because of the twists and turns, you couldn’t even see
the top of the slide when you were at the bottom. Unlike the uber-safe plastic slides today,
you went fast. So. Much. Fun. It was also an exciting feat to climb up the slide, but that was a more
dangerous endeavor. First, you had to
avoid burning your hands and feet, which were most likely barefoot because your
shoes would slip too much on smooth metal.
Next, you had to be prepared to cling to the edge or get pushed down by
someone coming down the slide. Sometimes
we’d have a ‘lookout’ at the top to holler down if someone else was coming. Sometimes
we went up in teams and braced one another from falling backwards. As you inched your way upwards, your hands
were sweaty, slipping on the hot metal.
Your legs were shaking. It was a
whole lot easier to give up the climb and slide all the way down, but when you
made it to the top? Exhilarating.
That’s kind
of how depression seems to work.
You start to notice that you’ve been slipping down, crouched on your feet and
trying not to get burned. It is tempting
to just keep sliding because reaching out to grab that hot edge and crawl back
to the top is so daunting. But you also
know that the further you slide down, the higher you're going to have to climb to get back to the top. Sometimes you don’t even realize you've started to go down that slide. And sometimes you do, but the bottom seems so
far away and the glide downwards so much easier than the alternative. Sometimes the twists and turns blind your view
of the top, and you don’t realize how far down you’ve gone. You need people to remind you where you are and encourage you to grab that edge, to inch upwards again.
Maybe you’re one
of those kids on the slide. Or maybe you are a ‘lookout.’ As we enter into the season most people
associate with budding flowers, green grass, and longer days, take note that
for some, this is the darkest time of
the year. If you are
one of those kids on the slide, remember that you are not alone. Tell
someone. Get encouragement. An
insightful woman once told me that the surest way to let a fear or anxiety
grow was to squash it down, try to control it, or pretend it wasn’t there. Rather, she suggested, it was better to take
that thing and hold it up. Look at it from all angles. Let the Light shine on it. Then, and only then, can you really deal with
it.
Darkness has a way of letting ugly things grow. So, my friend, today? Today when you maybe don’t want to get out of
bed and the To Dos of the day seem like more than you can bear, let the Light
shine. Take those struggles, and hold
them up. Look at them straight in the
face. Grab the edge of the slide. Get a ‘lookout.’ It’s
good to have someone to warn you if something is going to come flying down the
slide at you, to encourage you when you start to slip, and to be there to
celebrate when you make it to the top. You can do this, my friend.
You can search for “Depression help” to find
oodles of resources on what to watch for and how to help.
