Ourland

“It was the kind of January afternoon that makes life seem completely pointless, just one miserable thing after another…” – Daniel Kolitz, “The Goon Squad”

I was eating a soft taco and watching the local news with this guy I know when a segment came on about seasonal depression, or seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which I guess is what we’re calling it now, or maybe always has been called. The anchor was listing the symptoms (irritability, difficulty concentrating, feeling “blah”) while generic-looking sad people in bulky coats wandered around on screen doing generically sad things, like staring blankly at the pavement and/or massaging their temples. The guy eating a taco next to me shook his head, and between bites of a flour tortilla, said: “I swear they’re just making stuff up now.” I felt compelled to stop him right there, mid-bite, because as a guy who senses the spectre of death as soon as temperatures dip into the 40s, I needed to set the record straight; I couldn’t allow my fellow SADders to be characterized as softies with no fortitude. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I should write a beginner’s guide, of sorts, to give non-SAD people an idea of what seasonal depressives go through when the weather turns cold. 

A good place to start is by explaining, in the most visceral terms possible, the physical, emotional, and spiritual experience of SAD: it feels like your innards are decomposing and are being feasted upon by nocturnal scavengers; it feels like a noxious gas has been released within your skull, dulling your thoughts and inducing lethargy; it feels like all the virtuous things in the world have been slaughtered by some three-eyed pervert who’s now in charge, and will remain in charge forever.The first inklings of this terror begin in mid-September, after the pools have closed for the summer and that first autumn chill pricks the skin. For some people, we’ll call them the Pumpkin Spice Collective, this briskness is a virtue: it signals the onset of decorative gourd season, which for people like my wife, is the absolute peak of existence. I enjoy the fall, too, in and of itself, because it’snice to have a respite from the muggy buggy summer, but I can never fully embrace it, because I see through its thin serotinal beauty for what it really is: a precursor of the impending Death Season. I visit the pumpkin patch in October with a genuine smile on my face; I admire the rusty foliage, watch my four-year-old trip over gourds, and appreciate the mosquito-free air, yet I know what those dangling skeletons and sinister jack-o-lanterns foretell. 

I enjoy the fall, too, in and of itself, because it’snice to have a respite from the muggy buggy summer, but I can never fully embrace it, because I see through its thin serotinal beauty for what it really is: a precursor of the impending Death Season. I visit the pumpkin patch in October with a genuine smile on my face; I admire the rusty foliage, watch my four-year-old trip over gourds, and appreciate the mosquito-free air, yet I know what those dangling skeletons and sinister jack-o-lanterns foretell.

The worst of it begins with daylight savings time; I know, we all hate daylight savings time. It seems to be the only thing that most people in this deeply divided country can agree upon. Yet daylight savings time, for SADers, acts as a line of demarcation separating light from dark, warmth from cold, sanity from insanity. Up until this hell-line, many of us SADders are able to irrationally convince ourselves that maybe, just maybe, winter won’t come this year, that we’ll live forever in a prosperous, eternal fall. Then, in the wee hours of an early November night, the Great Hand of Father Time (see: an arbitrary human law passed more than a century ago) randomly turns back the clock, and we’re forced to acknowledge that the annual descent into bleakness has begun. For several weeks afterward, we roam around in a semi-catatonic state, lamenting how the darkness has swallowed us whole, occasionally mumbling to each other: “I can’t believe it’s only 6:30. It feels like 9 o’clock.” For the well-adjusted human, this time change is perhaps obnoxious and definitely idiotic, yet tolerable, while for a SADder it might as well be the Big Crunch. 

Yet we are not inert against the Great Machinations of the Universe and asinine human laws; we can, as Dylan Thomas put it, rage against the dying of the light. With this spirit of resistance in mind, I’ve drummed up some time-tested strategies for dealing with SAD. The first thing you’ll need to do is to listen to some really melodramatic music, because the only way to move through a depressive episode is to feel it so deeply that your body digests and excretes it, like oil, through your pores. So throw on a Radiohead song, something from Thom Yorke’s peak depressive phase, like “Let Down.” Or, if you’re mired in the darkest abyss imaginable, pick a track, any track, of off Nick Cave’s Idiot Prayer: Alone at Alexandra Palace, which features Cave, that pale harbinger of death and perhaps an actual vampire, doing moribund piano versions of his own tunes, one of which includes the cheery lyrics: “entire towns being washed away/favelas exploding on inflammable spillways/lynch mobs, death squads, babies being born without brains.” It’s really dismal stuff, and trust me, it’s exactly what you need right now. 

But don’t linger here for too long: there’s a fine line between catharsis and indulgence, and if you cross that line, you may find yourself buried under the covers on a Tuesday afternoon, listening to “Sad Waters” on repeat until you feel as doomed as a mouse trapped in a bathtub with a cat. This is exactly what you don’t want. So once Yorke, or Cave, or your melancholic musician of choice has serenaded the sadness from your soul, march into the kitchen and make a stew. You heard me: MAKE A STEW. Preferably with organic meat and an absurd amount of potatoes; too many potatoes, even. Russet, sweet, purple, it doesn’t matter, just make it hearty as hell. The rhythmic chopping of root vegetables will give your life a temporary sense of purpose, and adhering to a recipe will require just enough mental focus to push the sadness to your psychic periphery. The process of making and eating a stew is a total sensory experience, a small win, an act of creation during a season in which many living things are either going to sleep, skipping town, or straight up dying. Embrace the stew and it’ll embrace you back.

The rhythmic chopping of root vegetables will give your life a temporary sense of purpose, and adhering to a recipe will require just enough mental focus to push the sadness to your psychic periphery. The process of making and eating a stew is a total sensory experience, a small win, an act of creation during a season in which many living things are either going to sleep, skipping town, or straight up dying.

Here are a few more random tips for all you SADders out there: DON’T notice how much leafless trees look like death skeletons. DON’T Google the weather in St. Petersburg, Florida (today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, it’s supposed to be sunny and 75). DO use so much hand sanitizer that you can’t make a fist without cracking your scabby knuckles. Unsightly, chapped hands may be painful, but they’re necessary for minimizing the chances of getting sick,* because the only thing worse than being in the throes of SAD is being in the throes of SAD with a gut-destroying stomach bug, a throat as raw as a peeled carrot, and a four-year-old with an upper respiratory infection who’s so delirious that he’s crying about how “my dad can’t be my husband.” Plus, you can always slather a dollop of Working Hands on those flaking, gargoyley paws of yours; that’ll at least keep the knuckle scabs at bay. 

Maybe you’re not a SADder yourself, but are in the unfortunate position of being in a relationship with one. If you’re unsure if your partner is suffering from SAD, ask yourself these questions: do they have dark craters punched under their eyes? Do they mope around the house like a castrated Eeyore? Do they yell at your pets and become overwhelmed by simple tasks, like standing up? Have they suddenly started reading Baudelaire by candlelight at 2 a.m.? If you answered yes to any of these questions, your partner is probably a SADder. If it turns out you are in a relationship with one of these softies, and their attempts at self-soothing have failed, here are some ways you can approach common situations to ease their mortal groaning: if you find them disassociating under the covers, don’t say It’s 3:30 on a Tuesday. Why aren’t you at work? And what did I tell you about listening to Nick Cave? Do say: I’ll get you some more NyQuil. If they haven’t showered in several days, don’t say Good lord, you smell like an AT thru-hiker. Do say: That’s an interesting scent you’re cultivating there! If you’re simply fed up with all the self-indulgent sulking, don’t say Please take off your sunglasses and hood, you’re at the dinner table and your son is trying to talk to you. Do say: Would you like a bowl of stew? 

Seriously, I think stew might be SAD’s kryptonite. The smell of the aromatics (garlic, onions, etc) mixing with olive oil and browning at the bottom of the pot will beat back the dying of the light. The bubbling beef broth and softening potatoes will make you forget all about the skeletal trees moaning outside. Your house will be filled with the earthy, wholesome scent of root vegetables drowning in a liquid made from dead cow bones, and you’ll feel accomplished because you undertook an act of creation in this season of despondency. Pat yourself on the back, ol’ pal: you’ve successfully, if temporarily, steeled yourself against the Three-Eyed Pervert of Winter. But if sometime in January or February, during that amorphous strip of nothingness between New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, the darkness and cold become completely unbearable, keep in mind that several airlines offer cheap direct flights to St. Petersburg. If you play your cards right, say, by increasing the volume and frequency of your Nick Cave wallowing sessions, I’m sure your partner will gladly buy you a ticket. It’ll likely be a one-way flight, too, given the way you’ve been acting, and let’s be honest, riding out the rest of the cold season in Florida might be the best thing for everyone involved. 

* – I mean, you’re still going to get sick, but at least give yourself the illusion of putting up a fight.