Hello Darkness My Old Friend

Navigating the seasonal dip, the medical system, and the space between my ears

Monday night I walked by myself, long and strong and fast. On the bike path, through the State Forest, towards Nat’s Farm Field. Earbuds in, Jackson Browne on. Brain moving through and around the music, trying to grab onto notes. Rain coming, first only in the shape of lumpy clouds on the horizon, then in penny drops. Finally in nickels and quarters, shiny splats and splotches on the blacktop beneath my whirling feet.

For color, my eyes scanned the edges of the path for goldenrod and purple aster, tucked bravely among the wild peas, now pocked with creepy black seed pods.

I tried to sing out loud. I swung my arms up and around, stretched my back, let the raindrops collect on my eyelashes so I could blink them away. I could feel the walking endorphins struggling to lift me up while the grey curtains of early darkness came down. I had started out late, with so much longing to be outside and move my muscles. At least I was heading home with blood pumping, my heart and lungs and cardiovascular system cooperating even if my neurotransmitters were not fully firing.

That was Monday. It took me until, oh, maybe Wednesday to catch on. And even then I thought, “It’s only mid-September. How is it possible I already have seasonal depression? We still have 12 hours of daylight!”

This doesn’t usually hit me until October. Although “hit” isn’t really the right word. It slinks up behind me and stands a breath away like the unseen monster hovering over the actor in a horror film. Until I recognize those cold bony fingers wrapping around my neck. I don’t scream. I’m not terrified. Just disappointed. I turn around and say, “WTF? Again?”

This time, the monster was very stealthy, tip-toeing in on cat’s feet. I’ve actually been feeling off for a few weeks: tired, motivation mostly missing, thoughts running in all the wrong directions. And then I did something idiotic. I waited to refill my anti-depressant prescription until the day it ran out, thinking my wonderful pharmacy would come through for me as it always does. I neglected to look at the bottle, which said “no refills.”

Unbeknownst to me, the pharmacy did in fact attempt to take care of this hurdle by calling the Family Practice office at the hospital, where I’ve been passed around from one primary care provider to another so much in the last few years that I think I’ve seen eight different people. A nurse practitioner – one I’d never seen – took the call from the pharmacy and denied the refill on the grounds that I was overdue for an appointment. (What appointment? I have a physical every January and that’s always when my prescription is renewed.)

When my husband went to the pharmacy to pick up the prescription for me, of course he came back empty-handed – but with a clue from the pharmacist, who gave us the last name of the nurse practitioner she’d spoken with.

I got on the computer, got into Patient Gateway and messaged the Family Practice office right away, while simultaneously looking for something in my records about a missed appointment. There was no message about it, nothing under the appointments tab, and I don’t remember getting an email (which I know they don’t send anyway). But I did find a cryptic record of the pharmacist’s call in “follow-up notes” to a “visit” (aka telephone call which did not involve my participation) where the denial of the prescription was noted.

Fortunately, the person who answered my message on Patient Gateway informed me that if I needed the prescription now (um, yeah), she would relay that to the nurse practitioner as long as I also scheduled an appointment to come in for a check-up.

Eventually, the prescription and the appointment were procured, but three, almost four, days went by in the process. You’d think that would be no big deal – it’s a relatively moderate dose of Wellbutrin. (I have been on anti-depressants since early sobriety when I discovered – surprise! – that I had been covering up depression with drinking.) But I felt more and more loggy and had quite the upset stomach. Apparently Wellbutrin has a short half-life, and withdrawal symptoms can kick in after a couple days. And when I feel loggy, I’m unproductive, which is the number one thing that makes me feel bad about myself. Ridiculous, I know.

Take the flowers. The flowers – the beautiful, crazy colorful flowers that I have lovingly coaxed from seed to bloom over the last six months — are everywhere in the house. Especially this weekend, with the hurricane brushing up against us, I had to harvest like a mad woman. But we’ve had an excess of flowers in the house for weeks now.

Lately I’ve been looking at them and feeling guilty that I haven’t figured out a way to sell some of them this year.

 “This wasn’t the year you were going to sell them,” my husband reminds me, telling me that he loves having them all over the house – what could possibly be wrong with an excess of flowers? Well, nothing really. But earlier in the summer I was having fun “practicing” arranging them or putting together bouquets to give away to friends. Now I seem not to have the time or inclination to do more than get them into vases with some flower food.

Looking at the flowers reminds me that I am supposed to be making up my mind about whether I want to pursue this flower growing business idea. The way I feel right now makes me wonder (doubt) if I have the energy or the drive or even the desire to go in that direction, even if I could transition from my full-time job to a part-time one in a year or two. And I wonder, too, if turning something I love – growing flowers - into work will spoil it for me. I’ve kind of already done that with cooking and writing – though the flip side of that is I’ve always worked in a field I love. Sometimes in actual fields, too.

I still can’t picture how farming, writing, going to Delaware to see Dad as often as I want or need to, and working the job with the health care (and the salary that pays my mortgage in Delaware) are going to work. Not to mention having time to nourish my marriage! 

This is how my thoughts go, because I still have trouble sitting in the present, even after all these years of sobriety. I am constantly projecting into the future – and adding layers of complexity to my life. I specialize in this. Eventually it gets too much for me and I simply withdraw. Not a good pattern. Add some decreasing daylight and missing medication and it’s no wonder I’m in a funk.

But at least I recognize it, and in the last few days I’ve been able to make a conscious effort to lean on the tools I know I have. I crawled out of my comfy chair, went to my women’s meeting, and was greatly relieved to hear all the other sober women talk about how they deal with the negative voices.

And oh yeah, I was reminded, I don’t have to run the show all the time. I can let God be in charge. Right! That’s such a relief. “You have two choices in recovery,” a little pink index card that tumbled out of my Big Book said, “Do you want to go towards God or towards the disease?”

I texted a sober friend to meet for coffee. I texted my sister in Delaware. I texted my best friend in Maine. I called my Dad and sat on a log outside of the hoop house picking dead leaves off a geranium and talking to him for a half hour. I really don’t like talking on the telephone but missing Dad is actually one thing I know for sure that contributes to my low feelings. So if I just pick up the twenty-pound telephone and call him, I feel better.

I talked to my husband about how I was feeling, and he listened, as he always does – and administered what he calls hug therapy. 

And I walked. A lot. I got caught in the rain again on Thursday. It’s a thing, now. It’s okay. The endorphins don’t melt in the rain.

As the sun sets earlier and earlier, there’s one more change I’ve got to make: I have to go to bed earlier and get up earlier so I can grab all the sunlight I can before I sit down at my desk. Fussing around in the garden in the sunshine – or even on a semi-sunny day — is still the quickest way I know to improve my mood. And it doesn’t matter if I do anything fancy with the flowers when I harvest them. Bringing all that color and life inside is an antidote to the darkness.