S.A.D.

Into yet another December, and last year I felt lousy, the year before I felt lousy and the three years prior to that I felt lousy.  I blamed it on the divorce, and then the deaths. 

Last year, I had been going through a health scare early in December, that carried into January.  And so, I had another thing to add to the misery of the month. 

Yet, as I look back on 2012, it wasn't as bad of a year as the last five or six.  I am employed at a company that I actually like, working with people I actually like, doing work I actually like.  I've been dating someone for the majority of the year, and although it's not the ideal dating arrangement (long-distance), it's working.  My kids are both exceling at school, and they make me giggle on a daily basis .

I'm tired, but I've been tired since I started working at the age of 14.  (It happens to people who never stop working -  ever - [ask any of my siblings]), so that doesn't explain the lousy feeling that this year is bringing.

A couple people close to me suggested that I might have that seasonal disorder, SAD.  (Seasonal A-something, D-something). Quite possible.

I mean, does this disorder/disease/disfunction/discombobulation allow people to dwell on the losses?  I guess that's what I've been doing lately, and it's all been subconscious. 

I think about my sister's 50th birthday coming up this week, and I reach for my cell phone to call Jeff to talk to him about the celebration. 

I walk into a restaurant (yesterday) and Frank Sinatra is singing a song (You and Me), and I immediately think of the time when I was about 13 and I played the song on the jukebox at Speedy's (a hometown hangout that used to be), while my dad was working in California and I recall the tears that ran down my mother's face as she stared at the jukebox and missed my dad. . . and I actually reached for my phone to call my dad to tell him of the memory.

"Dominick the Donkey" or "Lazy Mary" come up on my iPod and I am in my parents' basement watching my father sing the Italian words without a hitch, and seeing Jeff spinning Rocco around in his arms. . .

Does this SAD thingy do that?

So I suppose it's not the misery of the actual year (2012) that causes the sadness.  It's the misery of this life.  And maybe the SAD thingy just happens to coincide with the time of the year.  Maybe we should propose celebrating Christmas at a different time, or maybe we should say SAD is a bunch of nonsense. . .

We all bring baggage into the holidays, and I certainly wish the baggage I was carrying was whether Grandma's feelings would be hurt because nobody ate her god-awful fruitcake, or the drama came from my mother making up names of author's while we played board games; or even the over-indulgence of alcohol by one of my brothers or my father or all of us. 

I wish the baggage came from the drama of one of the couples in the family fighting.  I wish the drama came from the fact that I washed all the dishes, and somebody else sat on their ass.  I wish the drama came from my father screaming at the grandchildren to calm down.  I wish the drama came from my brothers fighting and one of them going through the two-plated window.  I wish, I wish, I wish. . .

I might have this SAD thingy, and I could shoot Vitamin D into my veins like an addict, but I very much doubt it would work. . .

Perhaps Tracy Chapman summed it up best when, in one of her down times (maybe she has SAD?), she wrote:  "For Christmas and for New Year's, I wish and I resolve. . . but I'm disappointed by myself, Jesus and Santa Claus. . ."