I have a friend who used to live in New Hampshire.
She used to hit the tanning bed regularly during the long winter months.
No, she wasn't looking for a heaping bowl of skin cancer (and yes, we're still praying she doesn't get one.)
She was simply dealing with what she called the "winter blues."
She told tales of being constantly "down" during the gray, cold months; of wanting to bury herself in bed and never get up; of never being able to get warm, no matter how many coats she had on.
The tanning bed helped her cope, she said. The warmth and the light were welcome respite, apparently.
Upon further reflection and a move to Florida, she maintains she was a SAD sufferer, or someone who had
seasonal affective disorder, where people become depressed and lethargic because of prolonged cold, gray winter months and a lack of sunlight.
Now, I've lived my whole life in the great Sunshine State. So you'd think I couldn't relate.
And at first, I couldn't. I mean, I've never had to shovel snow, stoke a furnace, or wear thermal socks. Seriously.
The only seriously cold experience I ever had was when my brothers, father and I went camping, and in a freak coincidence, it plummeted to 18 degrees at night (an almost unheard of low for Florida in February.) Instead of being miserably frozen, though, we took great joy in pouring milk and orange juice on the pop-up table in the morning and watching it promptly freeze, forming perfect discs of death, if they were then chucked at each other at the just the right angle and velocity.
Cold and gray are definite Florida anomalies.
No one gets SAD down here.
At least not in the traditional sense.
But I've got a theory, people. A theory that I'm fairly certain would be of great interest to the American Psychological Association when they write DSM-V.
Despite what's considered the conventional form of the disease, I believe SAD has many manifestations, and one particularly virulent form I think the APA is overlooking is the
summer affective disorder.
Summer affective disorder, you ask? What's that? How can summer - the season of pools and bright colors and refreshing beverages - affect you, at least negatively?
It can if you live in a state like Florida, where the humidity makes it feel as if the heat of the sun is pressing down on your whole body, slowly pressure cooking you into the equivalent of one hot mess.
The symptoms?
Well, they start out relatively small.
You begin to express apathy about things that normally concerned you.
For instance, the power bill: While you normally strive to turn off lights and unplug unnecessary appliances, you now waste resources with wanton abandon. You don't care that your power bill doubled. Nope. You don't care one bit. It was the only way you were able to cool down from the outside world, in fact. You're cranking that AC down even lower as we speak. It doesn't matter that it will cost you another $100 a month. You're hot. It's a coping mechanism.
And then there's professionalism: You begin to ponder how you can spiff up your sundresses and flip-flops, so that when you attend meetings during the summer months, you don't have to dawn closed-toe shoes and pants. And really, it no longer bothers you that your summer look isn't the height of business casual. At least your don't have sweat stains blooming in the armpits of a your button-down shirt.
Then, as SAD grows, you begin to lash out at those close to you.
Perhaps, let's say, you wake up at night, and the lowered AC isn't cutting it anymore. Your much-larger-than-you significant other (who from this point on will be known as The Living and Breathing Furnace) has draped a huge, hot, sweaty limb over your body, and you can't take it. You begin to beat him, furiously trying to remove his Hot Limb of Oppression, muttering phrases like,
"You're smothering me! Get it off of me! Stop it! Why are you doing this to me? I'm a good person! I don't deserve to die like this!" You finally get out of bed in frustration and retreat to the kitchen, where you lay on the tile floor next to the dog and fall back asleep in it's comparatively welcome coolness.
Pretty soon, the situation grows worse. You can no longer disguise your SAD symptoms, and you begin to ignore normal social mores.
For instance, you start putting together outfits that don't require a bra. You can no longer stand the feeling of two sweaty cups of foam pressing against your chest and subsequently filling with your bodily liquids the second you leave the house. Nay, sometimes, if you're having a really SAD day, you debate not wearing underwear. After all, they become soaked through just by driving to the grocery store in your car, which you stupidly bought with BLACK interior because it was the best deal. Stupid stupid stupid.
You also stop wearing make-up, simply because no matter how non-comedogenic, oil-free, and long-lasting it is, it will sweat off, clog your pores, and make you look like a relatively hormonal, acne-prone, 13-year-old boy with raccoon eyes. Instead, you face the world bare-faced, pale and looking faint, mopping sweat from your brow at every turn.
Then, you start avoiding the outside world entirely.
Out of milk?
Doesn't matter. Eat juice on your cereal, honey. I'm not braving the heat for milk.
Don't have any toilet paper?
Where's the last roll of paper towels we've been saving?
Friends want to have you over for a BBQ, Bible study, friendly get-together?
Only if they're okay with you going naked and arriving at 11 p.m. at night, when the heat has finally died down to a bearable 100 degrees.
Now, when the situation can't be avoided, and you have to brave the outside world between the hours of 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., SAD sufferers will often display some distinctly odd habits; habits that, if ignored too long, will effectively ostracize them from normal society.
For instance, you may bob and weave across parking lots, sidewalks, and pathways, walking in wide, weaving patterns to stay in shaded areas and avoid sunny spots, where you feel as if the direct light hitting you may just melt you to your humidity-dysfunctional core.
You might accidentally leave your cell phone in the car, and then decide that it's better to miss 14 calls than go get it right that second, because then you'd have to be outside for more than 1 minute, battling the infernal heat as you bob and weave your way through your front yard and driveway.
You begin to serve and eat everything cold. Yes, even soup. And no, not even gazpacho.
You've been spotted putting crushed ice down the back of your shirt in Wal-Mart, even if the ice is stained with the last dregs of your Super Gulp Diet Coke, which you must be holding in your hand at all times in case the humidity and heat lulls you to sleep, leaving you to fry like an egg on the sidewalk.
You even consider paper training your giant Great-Dane-lab-mix dog, simply because he's got a black coat, and you take pity on the poor guy, who must attract so much heat when he goes out in the sunny backyard to use the bathroom.
The list goes on and on. As the humidity holds out, the situation inevitably gets worse, and most SAD sufferers have lost their wits (and most liquids) by mid-September in the state of Florida. You're a dehydrated, depressed, socially ostracized mess, who is living for the first time your state sees temperatures below 85 degrees, which you're praying happen in record-breaking time, i.e., before October.
Unfortunately, there is very little to be done for these SAD sufferers. Temporary solutions are just that, temporary. There is no real fix, other than moving to the Artic.
Many suffer in silence (or on their blogs...not me, of course. No. Not me. I'd never be this crazy. But many do. I'm just saying.)
Others hide their symptoms well, although even they can be found muttering the age-old phrase,
"I swear. I think this summer is worst than last. I mean, I don't think it's just me getting old. It's hotter! I blame global warming! All those stupid holes in the ozone layer!"Help us, APA. Help us, er, I mean, them. Help them so they don't suffer alone. Tell them that they are not crazy but are just extremely humidity-prone. And tell them it's OK.
Because until that happens, SAD sufferers everywhere will never truly be free.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go stand in front of my open freezer for a good 10 minutes. The computer is wafting too much heat at me, and I definitely need some relief.
Happy Tuesday, everyone!
