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Here We Go Again - Nearing November

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 The days are shrinking. The sun hides more often than it appears, leaving the sky a muted hue, a depressing pallor. Maybe it's the weather. The lack of sunshine, the cold setting in, and the restriction of being stuck indoors. It could be one of these things, all of these things, or something else, but regardless, each year, around this time, I feel the heaviness start to press behind my eyes. That mix of exhaustion, apathy, and inescapable sorrow that makes up my mental illness - depression.

I'm aware I carry this issue or obstacle (not really sure what to call it) with me all year round. Yet, when the days grow short and the end of the holidays appear, I always feel the worst. A clear pattern obviously. Perhaps it's some unresolved trauma, which seems likely, because there are wounds this time of year from years past that linger. Unhealed. Open. Old. 

Could it be the Christmases before, during, and after my parents' divorce? The awkward holidays, once my favorite time of the year, now the most dreaded. I once loved Thanksgiving and Christmas. Those holidays, plus Easter, were the occasions when my mother's side of the family would all gather into my grandmother's little house. We would trade presents, eat way to much food, and enjoy each other's company over a game (or more) of euchre. As an adult, I'm aware I romanticize those memories, but even so, they were wonderful. I'll never have even a version of that again. I intend to make the most of it I can with my husband and son, but it won't be the same. He'll never have all his aunts and uncles together with the many, many cousins playing and fighting. My parents are split, and my sisters and I all live in different places: Indiana, Minnesota, Canada. 

Thus, I become homesick, but I'm sick for a home and people who aren't the same or don't exist anymore. 

This trauma runs so deep that I don't want to face it, explore it, or analyze it, but each year, November nears and I'm left bereft of the seasonal joy I see in so many others. 

I know that feeling. Glorious in its simplicity but ever elusive as we grow up. 

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