December 21st is sometimes the most important day in my life. No, nothing happened on that day. Nobody was born, nobody died, or rather not anybody close to me, anyway. It's not a holiday. It's not a memoir. It's just a day that is something I look forward to each winter almost more than I look forward to the coming of the new year.
December 21st is the winter solstice. It's the shortest day of the year. Okay, so apparently this year it was the 22nd. Whatever. The fact remains though, that I look forward to that day because it really is the turning point of the year in a way. Let me give a bit of background on that.
The first brush I had with depression was when I was probably eleven or twelve. And it was, as far as I can tell, what was referred to back then as winter depression. Now it's apparently called some bullshit like Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Whoever came up with that acronym clearly thought they were being funny. Not that they necessarily were.
So the depression has come and gone since then. Sometimes it was restricted to winter. One winter I was fine, but spent the next summer in doom and gloom. It wasn't always consistent, but as a general rule, the winters have always been worse. It's cold, it's windy, and there's not as much daylight, not to mention sun. So the solstice has always been significant because it meant I made it. It meant that from here on out, the days would get longer, and with them, everything would get better.
And it usually does. It takes getting through the bitterness of February and March, but eventually it warms up, eventually I feel better. I'm glad that the solstice has passed. It means I've made it one more year. And I'm glad. Even though it's not much on the whole, it's still very significant to me.
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