Being alive is harder some seasons than others. For example, this season has felt like one marked by the constant feedback that while I have lots of people that love me, not very many of them are satisfying relationships that actually meet my needs. In so many ways, I did this to myself. I was born a mediator by both nature and nurture, but while I'm trying to help so many people get along and be heard, very few people return the favor. I have a whole list of friends who I no longer go to for advice because I just don't like their methods. 

I was raised in a "speak the truth in love" environment so everyone from my growing up feels like they can comment on how you're living. I had a friend not that long ago try to hold me accountable about a job and a dream that I didn't think they had any business having an opinion about because they weren't around for the critical years and didn't help me pick up the pieces afterwards. They spoke the truth in love, but it felt like taking instead of giving. They took me back to a traumatic place and left me with a heap of their own intellectualism. After that conversation, I resolved to stop talking about that experience with anyone who wasn't THERE. Because I have never met someone who understood that experience from a distance and I am tired of being bulldozed by people's loving truths on the matter.

Another thought that was pervasive in my growing up is that everyone should get an equal say on all topics. And I just don't think that way anymore. For example, if you don't know the difference between race and ethnicity, I don't want to listen to you pontificate on race issues from a false position of authority. It's a waste of both of our time. And that's an unpopular opinion. But not everyone's knowledge is equal and not everyone's experience is relevant all of the time. We'll all take turns sitting down. 

Most of my life, I took turns sitting, listening when I was told to, when I had to, when I had exhausted all of my other options. It's only now in the 3rd decade that I think about what it means to sit down because you want to. I think we are told that we should have something to say so it can be hard to admit when we don't. But I have less and less to say about how other people live their lives and I have become less and less patient with people who mean well be don't do well when trying to build our friendship.

January and February are over. Now the real year can begin. March being my birthday month and the month where my SAD lessens its grip coalesce in such a way that it feels like my own personal New Year. So here I am.

Each year, I learn a little bit more about what depression means to me and become a little more committed to simply saying "no I can't do that because I'm depressed" when it's a bit more than I can handle. There are a lot of things that I have done out of obligation. And sometimes obligation is love. Sometimes it is guilt. Sometimes it is both or neither. Since I like to think of myself as a sincere person, I am trying harder to examine "why am I doing this" and "if I can really give that". 

I do a lot of things to appear normal which is to say to appear not anxious or depressed. Sometimes my only motivation for saying yes to a social engagement is because it sounds like something that someone not suffering from SAD would do. 

Lately, I've been feeling like the worst parts of my parents sometimes take over my thought process. And it's been hard to face those things essentially alone. It's been humbling and not in the quiet dignified sort of way. I feel small and so incapable of giving people the love they deserve. And I wonder if this means that I will never be as known and loved as I want to be and if it's ok to worry about myself like that when I'm so clearly failing people important to me.