Summertime Sadness
You’ve heard of Seasonal Affective Disorder.
I have that. Except I don’t get it in the winter when it’s dark and cold. I get it in the summer. I thought I was something of an anomaly, but I looked it up and it turns out I’m not. It’s not as common, but there is a branch of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) that manifests in people in the summer. It’s called Summertime SAD.
I am summertime sad.
WebMD contributes it to heat, exhaustion, and loss of routine. And that’s definitely part of it for me. I seriously detest heat. I sweat all year long, so when it’s above 80 degrees, I’m melting and miserable.
But it’s more than that. My summertime sadness is something deep, visceral.
I think it’s because in the summer, people leave.
It’s hard for me not to take it personally when people leave.
Whether people are going on vacation or back home from college for the summer (I live in a college town), it feels to me like they are leaving me, and I hold my breath until they come back. Because… what if they don’t?
What would that say about me?
What does it say about me that it was so easy for them to be away from me for a week or a month or a season, when it was so hard for me? Do they miss me like I miss them? Have they thought of me?
In reality, the answer to those questions is: this has nothing to do with you!
My rational brain knows there is a difference between someone leaving and someone leaving me. It tells me they are not going away from me; there are going to the beach. Or to grandma’s house. Or to Disney World.
But my viscera is much stronger than that rational whisper, and it doesn’t believe any of that. It believes I am being left. Summer is the three-month version of my deepest fear.
It also feels incredibly unfair. Oftentimes people are thrilled to spend quality time with family during the summers. They are relieved and relaxed because they get to go “home.” Summer takes them to their childhood bedrooms and favorite home-cooked meals and decades-old traditions.
I don’t have that. For me, home is something I had to build by myself. And family is composed of the friends I’ve chosen to surround myself with. So when my friends immerse themselves in the exhale of being home with family, it reminds me that I cannot be to them what they are to me. I am their friend; they are my home. When they are with their family, I am away from mine. The planned interruptions of summer are, to them, a welcomed escape, and coming back to reality is less than exciting at the end of the season. I take that personally, too.
Recently a friend who is working on an advanced post-graduate degree told me if he could do his next semester remotely, he wouldn’t come back.
I was hurt. Why don’t you want to come back? Back to where I am?
Obviously, he wasn’t making any statement to me about my worth or my position in his life. He meant that being home is relaxing and being back here for school is stressful and he wasn’t looking forward to being thrust back into the busyness of schoolwork. But what I heard was evidence. My brain is always scanning for evidence that I do not offer enough to keep people around. Hearing a friend say that being away offers him something that staying around cannot is evidence that I cannot make him stay. I cannot keep him close.
What does that say about me?
I am summertime sad.
WebMD contributes it to heat, exhaustion, and loss of routine. I guess they’re right.
It is hot and so I stay inside the home that I built for myself without the trips and traditions.
It is exhausting to referee the fight between my head and my heart, wondering which one will come out on top in the end.
I am out of routine, and my routines promise me that there will be certain people around.
Thank God the seasons change.
