Finally - The Pallor of Death Removed

The sun beats down on my office window.
The cadence of dropping water beating time to my burdened heart.
Too long locked in the icy grips of death,
Too long diminished by surrounding darkness.
Too long the winter of my soul languishes in desperation.

But no, Spring is here - foul weather beside - today the sun is shining merrily on the dappled ice and snow of my fair city and I will wondrously come alive once more to the possibility of life.

And you? Does darkness burden your soul? Do you feel the binds of grayish clouds and mouldering cold? Do you, as this modern age has scientifically neutered language to express, feel SAD?

I remember when first I saw a television advertisement asking, plaintively, do you feel like you are on the outside in a group of people? Do you feel that you have trouble initiating conversation? New people make you nervous? Well, you may be affected with Social Anxiety Disorder and are in need of a complete chemical change of brain chemistry!

(as you can see, SAD means many things to many a sufferer)

No - Dammit - You are shy! This is not an illness to be born in shame! Shy people are necessary to make flirting far more fun! You do not need Xanax! You need a shot of rum and a lame joke up your sleeve to break the ice. Or sit in the background and watch people for God's sake. It is fun!

(Of course I write this while off my own meds - so take it with a grain of salt)

Seasonal Affective Disorder - another moniker adopted to try and de-normalize a normal feeling - is very real... why, when I was growing up we called it shack wacky - which is far more fun to say! All disorders are real, but they are not disorders, they are states of being - this is my point - Social Anxiety is shyness and is normal for most people to feel at some point. Seasonal Affective Disorder is the absolute pain of the soul which has us wake up to another morning of gray darkness and want to pull the covers over our tender frozen limbs.

Why is that not normal though? Do not even those who love to frolic in hell's forgotten ice crystals have mornings where they cannot get out of bed, or one snow storm too many which causes the snow shovel to be inexplicably snapped over the head of a well-meaning neighbour?

But the sun is shining.

I am sure there are those rare few disillusioned souls whose vampiric hatred of all that is good and light would cause them to cast a wearied gaze upon such majesty as our golden heavenly orb provides - but there are not many.

For most this is what life is about - sunshine pushing back darkness to the edge of reality, warmth carving its way through months of rock hard solidified ice, This my friends is the air of hope. It infuses us with the will to survive. It wends its way by snaking tendrils into our despair and awakens dreams.

For soon, we shall swim.