I love sum­mer but it’s usu­ally the time that Seasonal Affective Disorder men­aces me.

I always worry that sum­mer will end too soon. That explains my SAD to an extent.  Perhaps it’s a melo­dra­matic metaphor for life in gen­eral, even though I’ve never been fear­ful of death. Wikipedia says:

People who expe­ri­ence sum­mer SAD (spring and sum­mer depres­sion) show symp­toms of clas­sic depres­sion includ­ing insom­nia, anx­i­ety, irri­tabil­ity, decreased appetite, weight loss, social with­drawal, and a decreased sex drive.

That’s pretty accu­rate. A bur­glary at my house in late May didn’t do me any emo­tional favors. Depression set in imme­di­ately there­after, and it’s still here, lingering.

Most peo­ple don’t under­stand the sense of vio­la­tion that occurs when look­ing around your home, see­ing your pos­ses­sions strewn about, know­ing mere min­utes ear­lier some ani­mals were run­ning their hands through it all. The dis­tur­bance doesn’t leave your head for awhile. Just find­ing the energy to clean up is daunting.

By and large, friends and fam­ily exhib­ited a weird non-reaction to the bur­glary. Right or wrong, I inter­preted their silence as apa­thy. Sure, a few folks chimed in with “hang in there” com­ments, but the wide­spread non-reaction was unex­pected and strange.

All sum­mer long I’ve felt like a dumb ghost, look­ing through a win­dow at a party where every­one I know is laugh­ing, enjoy­ing them­selves. I’m out­side, estranged from the whole thing.

On top of it all, our cat died today.

But there’s no point wal­low­ing in self-pity.  Note Christopher Hitchens’ recent com­ments in dis­cussing his newly diag­nosed cancer:

To the dumb ques­tion “Why me?” the cos­mos barely both­ers to return the reply: Why not?

That’s true.

XXX

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