SAD / happy

I’ve moved a couch next to the brightest window in my home, south facing, with views of the Southside Hills, an enormous spruce, and the Waterford River Valley. It has taken me a year in this home to realize this might work. At least it’s warm when the sun shines in; an excellent spot for a nap, to read, or to generally zone the ‘f’ out. I feed the birds, and find observing their activity and song through my window, comforting during the cold months on white sky, prison island.

There are days I want to stay in bed all day and wait for my breathing to stop. To hold my breath until it is completely dark. The doctors think it’s a Generalized Anxiety Disorder with a dash of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to give it flavor. I’m almost certain it may be Seasonal Affective Disorder too - cruel humored physicians and their apt acronym; SAD - with a diagnosed Vitamin D Deficiency. Your body produces Vitamin D when your skin is exposed to sunshine - ultraviolet B (UV-B) radiation that the sun emits, then your body converts it to essential Vitamin D. Not enough Vitamin D affects so much - mental well being, weakness, fatigue, pain, depression. 

On particularly bad days, I am forced to say “mommy’s brain is sick, it doesn’t produce the right amount of chemicals to keep me well. I’m sorry mommy gets upset and hides in bed.” Some days I truly can’t control this fight and flight response. I hope I’ll feel the sunlight again, without the aid of big pharma. I’ve tried happy lights, artificial indoor substitutes for the glorious sun. I’m trying happy pills; they cost a lot, dull my senses, and make me fat and lethargic, but maybe they’re helping my brain leak happy chemicals into my system, to trick my body into thinking it’s warm and sunny?

Some northern climbs I’ve lived in are outrageously cold in the winter, but the sun shines, and you feel alright. Here the temperature stays mild, hovering right around freezing, occasionally jumping to fall/spring temps and rain, and rarely dropping to cold enough temps for clear skies. Cabin fever? Before I took happy pills I had it - I’d go berserker and bang on the walls. I’d step outside and punch, kick, and curse the snow banks. The sidewalk clearing policies here pale in comparison to other places I’ve lived. Pent up rage would have me stomping other’s feet and elbowing them at bar concerts - not because I had any particular beef with them, but that some behavior of theirs irritated me enough I just wanted to clear them out of my space. My bubble of insanity. 

Art therapy - self administered - offers a surprising sense of relief. The dark season tends to be one of my more productive creative times. If I haven’t let the creativity leak out of my body after so many days, I start to get twitchy and find the only way to alleviate this symptom is to make something. Anything. Stupid, gallery ready, tear it up and use it for pet bedding, whatever. 

I’ve been obsessed with chasing symbols and myths around the sun, how contemporary religions have absorbed sun worship from the ancients, and how many symbols and notions appear in different cultures and varying timelines throughout the history of this feeble minded, upright walking ape species we belong to. Much of my art explores these notions. Most of the varied nonsense I read sends me further down the rabbit hole. 

I carved linoleum blocks, to string together several four seasons myths found in ancient, northern stories. These often involve animal symbolism to explain the changing seasons, to comprehend the changes in light, the dying off of plants, the fertility of life itself. Frequently these myths employ animals in the explanation of the miraculous, of the incomprehensible. 

Norse mythology alludes to dark winter days as the wolf having swallowed the sun. As the days grow shorter, the leaves and plants shrivel and die, the wolf starts to creep into the sky. In the center of the coldest, darkest time of year, the full wolf moon rises. In other northern myths, the female reindeer carries the tree of life in her antlers, as only females retain their antlers through the dark, cold, winter. Male reindeer shed their antlers annually. The mother sheep welcomes the return of the light with her first lamb and milk. She is the first to “dar a luz”, the Spanish phrase for giving birth, which literally translates to ‘bring forth to light’. 

After a few years on white sky, prison island, you may hope to finally embrace the brighter, white sky days, and maybe even accept them for being adequately bright once in a while. Pop a vitamin D supplement, maybe chug down some cod liver oil to up your reserves, put on a warm coat, you’ll be fine. “There’s no bad weather, just bad gear.” The set of rubber rain gear my mother-in-law gave me is the one thing keeping me going in the prolonged winter. This gear allows me to poke sticks at nature in my backyard. I can sit on the ground and dig up the roots of the weeds on the warmer days when the surface is mud. I can monitor the growth of my bulbs which freakishly have appeared in early March…don’t they know spring really doesn’t arrive on white sky, prison island until late June? 

Some days I’ll make piles of sticks, to add to my check gate terracing system I’ve been constructing to attempt to slow down the erosion. Pick up the neighbor’s leaves? Sure, they don’t mind, my bulbs will love it, a little mulch blanket to insulate them some until it’s time. Other days I’ll pick up the tiniest bits of plastic, debris, waste, human abuse of the land, and bag them up to relocate to the landfill. I’m trying to restore the habitat; erosion, lack of attention, trash, and general disregard have left the space somewhat barren and lifeless.

My father and I need to sun ourselves, especially in the winter. We’ll bundle up in parkas and find a sunny nook, protected from the wind, to absorb as much of the magical UV-B as we can, with the hopes that in its penetrating the dermis, it will convert into the mysterious fuel our bodies crave; happy Vitamin D. As we welcome the change of seasons, and increase in light, I await the 100’s of flower bulbs I planted in the fall, hoping their exploding color and life help trick the SAD away. That it’s going to be OK on white sky prison island.