Published on 12, July, 2020
Anyone else have this?
Where most look forward to ever more daylight, it's around now that I start to miss in advance the clear delineation between day and night. That first evening leaving work and it's still daylight depresses me profoundly in a way I can't quite explain. The aggressive insistence of Spring I suppose.
I'm really going to miss my 4.30 pm twilights, but I suppose if we had our personal favourite seasons (autumn/winter in my case) all year round we'd never appreciate them to the extent we do.
Anyone else understand/have this reversal of the more conventional form of SAD? It's not that I won't get *something* out of the warmer months of flourishing nature, but witnessing Spring's birthpains is like an assault on the senses. Daffodils kind of disgust me - they're so raw, the early shock troops of the season, forced out of the soil into cold harsh misery and screaming in pain. Crocuses too. Like the visual equivalent of being near chopped raw onions or something. Snowdrops at least look more pleasant and delicate, but they're so impertinently 'early' - can we just have winter for now please, thanks? Anyone get this, or am I just sounding insane?
All the while that I'm moaning to myself about the chaotic sleep pattern which means I woke today, again, around 4pm obscures the fact that by sleeping so late I am *deliberately avoiding the daytime*. Daytime, you see, is when frightening or nerve-wracking things are most likely to happen (a sudden knocking at the door; a letter/envelope whose very 'official' appearance scares me; a phone call out of the blue bringing unanticipated news concerning me etc etc). All of these fears and the tension are quite ridiculous and out of proportion in my mind, yet I still have them every single day; so, I'm lying to myself when I moan (internally) about sleeping late because at heart I am facilitating my own avoidance of the day.
Is there an element of this in your behaviour/attitude, Shard? The rawness-reaction you mention is very familiar to me but I wonder if our antipathy is basically an aversion to the ever-present in-your-faceness of daily life. Life is like watching a tv set when somebody's turned up the controls - colours, sound, brightness and so on - to eleven or more.
Steven said:Daytime, you see, is when frightening or nerve-wracking things are most likely to happen (a sudden knocking at the door; a letter/envelope whose very 'official' appearance scares me; a phone call out of the blue bringing unanticipated news concerning me etc etc). All of these fears and the tension are quite ridiculous and out of proportion in my mind, yet I still have them every single day
I have all those fears too, all based upon things that have happened in the past. I am constantly hypervigilant.
I find drawing the curtains when it gets dark a comforting experience. Finally the day is over. I can shut out the outside world and start to feel 'safe'.
One of the things I find most stressful in work is hyper vigilance. Even though my job is suitably routine based and highly predictable, I hate the chess moves of people coming and going around me, nobody at rest, always looking for greener grass. And I hate suddenly whispered conversations in inner offices, my paranoia kicks in massively. High alert never gets switched off. And that’s in one of the least fraught professions there is, I dread to think what I’d be like in the ‘real’ world