february 13, 2008. 8.34 am.

I just sat under a S.A.D lamp. It is supposed to take away all of my winter time blues, this impenetrable sadness, this cloak that I am constantly under, well I’ll tell you what, I would love to see this lamp lift off my cloak. But I am not too certain that is likely. I don’t really know what it is supposed to do for me, with its space age looking frame and 10,000 lux wattage. Oh I think I’ll probably get a sun tan underneath of it before I am removed of my seasonal depression. 20-30 minutes a day for happiness. Hmm. Happiness. Such an intangible product. A malevolent foe. I do not know if I will ever truly be at that point. I have been close, currently and in the past, but always, always there is a nagging voice in my head that says, this will not be alright, no, this will not be okay. And it makes me want to drink a beer or smoke a joint. It makes me want to not take my medication. Especially when I wake up a zombie after a drug induced sleep, with sleep still in my eyes, and on my night clothes, with sleep lingering in every corner of my room, with my rambunctious fiancé screaming out, “there is coffee downstairs! Coffee, wake up!” I wonder how, when my limbs way pounds and pounds, I am supposed to pull off this whole housewife act that I have gotten myself into. It’s not as though this man makes me be anything special, he doesn’t require that I fold laundry or vacuum the floor [unless the floor REALLY needs to be vacuumed, then I should probably just do it,] Even last night over talk of this new reality of mine, he told me to make my art a business, one I have to get up and do everyday, to forget about the normal household tasks and reserve some time at the end of the day for them, but to focus on what I want to get done, what I would like to get out there. But in truth, I have no idea what to get out there. The depression drags me down. These months used to be for writing incessantly about the snow and ice, how the cold freezes the lungs, how our fingers are frozen together, but now it only for moping around a big gothic brick house, and doctors visits, and S.A.D lamps, and lectures on mental illness. Again, it makes me want to drink a beer. I understand why people become alcoholics and because life has not always been so kind to me, I have to really watch myself. A few beers a week is all I can have. Or else I will spiral, and the doctors, my family and my fiancé are always waiting in the wings, watching for the spiral, the collapse. Catching it before even I can. Sometimes, I wish there was no net there at all below me. I think I could create something wonderful before the fall.