... Because Spring
I never could get the hang of spring
I don’t have a “real” post for you this week. I could cite many legitimate reasons why … mostly having to do with a welcome uptick in my counseling work, several conferences that Mercy and I are applying to, and an upcoming trip for which I’m getting ready. But I think the underlying issue beneath it all is that in the springtime — usually from about March through May — I battle some really heavy seasonal depression.
Yes, you read that right. Unlike so many who suffer from some form seasonal affective disorder in the winter when days are shorter, mine starts to kick up when the days get longer and warmer. I tend to settle out in June, although I’m generally lower energy all Summer and begin to perk up again in late August and early September. September through December are really my best months mood-wise, but I generally do fine in the dead of Winter when most are going stir-crazy. Come mid-March, however, it just really gets difficult for me.
I wish I could explain how the Spring feels for me, my mood, and my body. But I think this GIF covers it:
My partners know this about me, and continue to be actively and beautifully supportive and patient with me through days that feel oppressive and unbearable. For that I am so fortunate and grateful. I really don’t know how I’d get through it without them.
I wrote about this once on another blog, and someone who deals with similar seasonal issues said that she tends to get anxious in the spring because she senses a kind of “underlying tension” connected to things that are about to start growing up through the ground. The inevitability of the upcoming growth felt “stressful” to her. There’s definitely something to that.
For me, it’s a deep discomfort that is both physical and emotional. My body feels heavy, like I’m always carrying a weight and/or walking through molasses, but underneath that there is an acute feeling of hypersensitivity, tension, and on some days just searing rage. That’s why I love that GIF above: it encapsulates the sensation of feeling all of those conflicting things at once. There’s an internal violence to it.
I think that autumn, particularly harvest season, gets a bad reputation as being somehow “violent” because things are pulled from the earth; but I see it differently. In the autumn, things are returning to the earth. What’s being harvested would die anyway if it wasn’t reaped. Things settle. In the spring, things are breaking through the earth — as if pulled upward by the sun. The process of new things emerging is a struggle: bugs breaking to the surface, birds breaking through eggs, sprouts breaking through seeds. Birth is generally violent and painful. But the results, for the most part, make us forget. The joy of new life rightfully eclipses the violence it took to be born. Beauty is born from pain.
Even the spring-related resurrection myths are deeply violent: whether it’s Jesus or Osiris or Dionysius (or any of the myriad other deities who died and came back to life): all came to very violent ends in order to have triumphant rebirths and resurrections.
God I really sound like one of those moody continental existentialist philosophers right now.
If today were a better day, I could probably weave all of this into a post on power dynamics and masochism and alchemizing pain into beauty and pleasure. But I know there are several masochists and switches out there who can do that MUCH better than I ever could.
So I’ll just leave this here, with the reassurance that Sir Quill is doing just fine. Seriously. There are some really exciting and beautiful things happening in my life right now that — like spring — will soon eclipse the struggles it took to get here. I have a great therapist; I have a wonderful support system; and I’m going to be doing some traveling in the coming weeks that will feed my soul in different ways.
That being said, I’m not going to hold myself to regular posts while I’m on the road. If something comes to me, I’ll post. Otherwise, Please Kink Responsibly will return in about 3 weeks.
See you then!