Tag: grey

The Grey Time

We’re moving into the grey time, where the holiday red and green and tinsel are a memory, the white snow is muddied, and the new year is weeks old. The sun hasn’t shown itself in weeks and the days are still too short. Now is the time I want to hibernate until I start smelling the grass begin to perk up.

In an agrarian world, everyone would be resting this time of year, storing up for the busy three seasons (I think. I am not an anthropologist.) But this is not my world. I go to work and teach my classes, then (as in today) go to the brightly-lit Starbucks and work on writing.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Coffee helps my mood, as does accomplishment. And I give myself credit for every little accomplishment to boost myself. “Yay! I got up! Hurrah! I wrote 300 words! Yippee! I cleaned the toilet!”

I will persevere. If I get too depressed, I know to talk to my doctor. But: “Yay! I’m going to class!”

Light

This time of year depresses me — literally — with its dark mornings and uniform bleakness of the terrain. It’s not the deep despair of my bipolar depression, but a constant sense of flatness, of anhedonia, of just wanting to stay in bed. The festivities of Christmas that buoyed up my spirits have long passed; all now is grey.

My psychiatrist has prescribed 1 hour a day in my grow room for light therapy. There’s plenty of light in the small basement room, supplied by eight fluorescent light fixtures. And, although it’s a small room, there’s a table and chair where I can sit and even an old iPad I use to maintain my plant records.

And then there’s the plants. Right now, I have starts of herbs like hyssop and calamint, celery leaf and Asian celery, and my tomatoes and peppers popping out of the ground. For the most part, they’re tiny seedlings with their seed leaves no bigger than a baby mouse’s ear. But they’re alive, and I almost believe I can feel the light of their lives brightening my day.

In the gloom of this season, I will take all the light I can get.