I know that I am depressed when my therapist looks at me like my happiness is a question I’m supposed to answer. She keeps on looking. The silence grows thin and transparent. It’s hard to explain. But I say something that I immediately forget and she looks at me. She looks at me and I feel how blank my mind is, how badly I want her to say something that makes me happy. I only expect my therapist to make me happy when I’m depressed and out of ideas. It’s then that the emptiness settles in my gut like a hunger long overdue and long ignored. It's then that I realize how ridiculous it is to think other people can feed me when I can't feed myself.

I’ve accepted what I believe is Seasonal Affective Disorder in pieces over the last decade. I used to just think February was cursed. I guess SAD is an improvement to a supernatural indictment. Technically. But it doesn’t really feel any different. It does, however, explain why no one else thought that February was cursed despite copious amounts of annual evidence. It’s just my brain tripping at the start of the race.

At the point in the year when everyone I know is starting exercise plans, cleaning sprees, and other New Year’s resolutions, I’m just beginning to wonder why I feel different, less relaxed, tight...exhausted and empty. By the time February arrives, I’m wondering if I’m ever going to feel like myself again, whoever I was. If that person was even real. 

This year is probably the most vivid that the descent to February has ever been. While I'm certain that the pandemic doesn't help, I wonder if things are getting worse or if I just know myself in excruciatingly small detail now. I feel the days when I skip my vitamin D like a loss of gravity. My skin is so thin these days that I avoid people for fear that they'll hurt me on accident and I won't be able to explain or make it make sense. If I could sleep through the next 5 weeks, I would. I know that it's just a waiting game for the sun to come back and I'm taking a lot of comfort in the fact that I've been here many times before. Every time, March comes and a light switch that I didn't know I had is flipped on. But today, I wish I was different, someone else.