Photo by Jonathan Knepper on Unsplash
Today is a federal holiday.
It is MLK day and everything federal is closed. A lot of businesses, well at least the home offices of these businesses, are closed. It’s a three-day weekend in the middle of January. Even so, I am going to work at 12 noon today and get off at 9 PM.
At home, it is 26 degrees and a light blanket of snow fell after 430AM.
I know it was after 4:30 AM, because I was awake then. Not because I was expecting snow, but because I am still not sleeping very consistently. Unless you count the fact that after going to bed around 10 PM, I wake at 12;30 am, 3 am, and then around 4:30 AM.
By 7:00 AM, I am awake again, but am feeling more tired than at 430AM, 3AM or even 12:30 AM.
But it is time to “make the doughnuts,” so I get up and start the day. This is my routine these days. Life is not a holiday right now. And I am not expecting life to be unicorns and gum drop trees. All I am expecting is to be able to live a balanced life with my depression.
I do not think that this is too much to ask for.
A balanced life is not a holiday, but it could be. It is not all work, but it could be. And a balanced life is certainly not extremes, which is where much of my life falls these days. I’d like to be happy when it is appropriate and be sad when I need to be.
I can be sad but haven’t really been happy in quite a few years.
Yes, years. And even if I have been happy, I am not seeing the happiness. I am not seeing the sad, or happy or much of what lies between. It is just another day. And when I go to bed, I am doing what I did yesterday and the day before.
But I am optimistically, but not consciously, expecting a different result.
Each night, I am thinking that tonight will be different, tonight I will sleep through the night. My psychiatrist has been working on different combinations of drugs to facilitate my sleep, without getting me addicted to a specific type of medication.
And I do applaud her focus and her professional advice about certain types of medications.
So even though I am not sleeping through the night, I am getting laundry done, and keeping the woodstove fueled. However, I would trade that for a chance to sleep from the time I went to bed, until the time I woke up some 8 hours later.
I am sure I slept through the night in the past, but I do not remember that anymore.
So, I am awake, and there is snow on the ground. The land line phone just rang, and it was our pest control guy. His company will not let him travel in his company truck when there is even a little snow on the back country roads. He was to come around 10AM but will need to reschedule. It seems like he will be having a holiday.
Once again, I have managed to dance around what I was thinking about.
Should life be a holiday? I am reminded that if you are doing something you love and believe in, you will never work a day in your life. Back in my early college days, I worked one summer for VIMS (the Virginia Institute of Marine Science), at Gloucester point. My job was to take an 18-foot Boston Whaler to the mouth of different rivers, then follow the high tide as it went upriver. Every so often I would stop and take a water sample.
I kept pinching myself saying, “I cannot believe that they are paying me to do this.”
So, I do know what that feels like. Had I made working on boats my life’s work, my life would have taken a different turn. It would not be recognizable. But it may or may not have included episodes of depression.
For I was born having depression and have spent 68 years of my life with depression as my partner.
Once, for almost 15 years, depression was a silent partner. After my “lost year,” I had a string of years where depression lay dormant. I got married, graduated from college, had 3 children, and almost everyday life was a holiday.
However, my depression felt I was getting too comfortable and decided to get my attention once again.
And depression has been an off and on factor in my life ever since. So, to answer the question, should life be a holiday, I cannot say yes. But I also cannot say no. Once again, all I am looking for is balance. And I am still looking for balance as I write this.
