SAD = Stupid Arctic Doldrums and Other Issues

I dislike whining about personal stuff excessively, but I’ve been struggling with this issue for over a month and I’m hoping it might help if I write about it. Warning - this post is going to be VERY long, and VERY whiny.

Last winter, and the one before that (the ones since we’ve moved back to NID) I struggled with mild depression, low energy levels, and a general inability to be at all motivated to do anything when I come home in the evenings. I’m pretty sure it’s Seasonal Affective Disorder if I want to get fancy about it. The days are so short and often gloomy, the weather outside cold and uninviting, my commute is long and treacherous, I don’t get enough exercise because my favorite way to do that is to go for a long walk after I get home, I wake up in the dark and come home in the dark… etc. I cope with it by eating lots of yummy comfort food (i’m ok with this method - food is your friend! Humans are related to bears, we can quasi-hibernate. Honest.), drinking lots of yummy mochas, snuggling on the couch under a fuzzy blanket reading books and watching TV. On the weekends I’m great, because of the daylight and the opportunity to get out and go sledding (absolute favorite winter sport!) or cross country skiing or even tromping around in the woods.

I wouldn’t call my “depression” (I like quotes) debilitating by any means, but it has a cumulative effect as the months go by, and after the holidays are gone and spring is still months away I start to get cabin fevery. Sort of run down. I think about it as carrying Internal Sunshine around with me, and after a while it starts to get dimmer and dimmer.

This winter I was doing much better - I had a lot more energy, I think largely due to not having just moved up and started a new job/having no money (Winter ‘05), or built a house/having no money (Winter ‘06). This winter we had such a great Christmas! I enjoyed it so much - the best part being that we had enough money and time to buy or make nicer, more thoughtful gifts for our family. Life was good! (Is good, really…)

Then… we had a “Chimney Fire” (no harm done, see Mike’s blog a while back) and ever since then I have been stressed about using our wood stove. We went a week without it, and then we had to use it or face paying $150 a month to keep our house at 60 degrees using our in-wall heaters. I have always had a total fire paranoia, whereby anytime there’s the slightest risk of fire involved in anything I immediately identify said possible risk and have trouble getting it out of my mind. Example: Mike is going to wire an outlet. The house is going to burn down. Example: My car had an emission problem relating to the gas tank. My car was going to explode. Example: Deep frying tofu, or anything else. Kitchen will catch fire. Example: Dryer going. Vent is filling up with lint, or vent connection will come loose from dryer, house will burn down. Example: Heaters on in the house. Constantly must make sure nothing is too close to them or house will burn down. Example: WOOD STOVE GOING. CHIMNEY WILL FALL DOWN, HOUSE WILL BE ENGULFED IN AN INFERNO AND BURN DOWN. -OR- WOOD STOVE GOING. TRUSSES WILL CATCH FIRE UP IN ATTIC. HOUSE WILL BURN DOWN. -OR- WOOD STOVE GOING. WOOD WILL EXPLODE IN STOVE, GLASS DOOR WILL BREAK, HOUSE WILL BURN DOWN. ETC ETC ETC!!!

Obviously this is not good. At all. I love, love love wood heat; I grew up with it, I was fine with it last year (mostly, although somewhat nervous because it was a new stove and pipe and hadn’t been used by my parents for years and parents always keep bad things from happening, it’s like, parent magic). I was pretty much ok with it before the “Chimney Fire”. I had my fire paranoia under control. Since then, however, it has controlled me. This has sucked. For me, because I’ve overcome other mental issues like insecurity, depression, etc in the past through sheer force of willpower and restructuring how I think about things, this sucks because this has been kicking my ass. I sometimes dread coming home because I know we’ll make a fire and even though logically I understand it’s fine, I am unable to push the worry and stress and awareness out of my head. For the last month, I had been hyper aware of every sound the stove makes. I can no longer remember what it was like when I wasn’t acutely aware of the fire in the stove. And worse, this sucks for Mike, because I’m struggling with something completely irrational that interferes with our nice relaxed evenings, every single evening, and he can’t fix it. I cannot imagine a better partner - Mike has been sensitive and understanding, and patient, and supportive, and all the while he tries to help me feel better about it. He doesn’t make the fire too big, or too hot, or too noisy. He understands my unconscious glance towards the stove and goes over and turns the air down. He also doesn’t let me wallow in fear and not build fires because that would make it worse in the end.

When we had our “Chimney Fire” it was one of the most stressful things that’s ever happened to me, right behind the time we thought our boat was sinking in the middle of the lake (also a false alarm). The last month, though, has been the longest continued period of constant awareness I’ve ever gone through. I’m not stressed at work, or even if we leave the house with the fire going. But when I’m home the awareness of the fire is always there. I’m not even worried about it consciously, but anytime the fire pops I start to go into fight or flight mode. I think I might even have a minor Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I sound so disgustingly overdramatic, yet I think I’m right… Since this started I have trouble going to sleep. It often takes over an hour of tossing and turning and drifting off only to jolt awake again, heart pounding, because the stove made a thermal expansion noise (see, I know all the explanations for sounds. doesn’t help much.) and it starts over again. To add to it, my hyper noise-awareness has spilled over to other things, like our house creaking. “What was that? A truss just split! Our house is going to fall down!” etc. I’ll even go the whole evening sometimes feeling calm and non-paranoid and right when I’m almost asleep a sound will wake me in a panic.

I have tried to get over this on my own. I do NOT want to cave into this fear and call a stove expert guy (or girl) and have them come check everything out (though I’ve been very close). I do NOT want to go see a therapist about my unreasoning anxiety (I’ve been close to this too). I do NOT want to pay to heat our house all winter using our heaters (easiest of the three options). All of these things would help, I think, with my anxiety. There have been about 50 times in the last month where I’ve thought “It would be so worth $100/$200/however much to just not have to deal with this anymore.” But then the next day I go to work and forget about it and don’t have time to bother.

And in the end, even though I have a psychology degree and believe in the true and wonderful benefits to be had in effective therapy I don’t want to give in, not on something so irrational. I want to beat this on my own. I want to rearrange my brain connections through sheer force of will. I want my intelligent, rational thoughts to be stronger than my base emotions. I hope I can do it. But at least I’ll try. And in the end I know I’m learning something about myself, and about life, and how I cope with unexpected challenges.