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Seasonal Depression in the Wrong Season

I’ve always wondered if I suffer from season depression.

Every year at the same time, I start to feel sad. As the days go by, and the season solidifies, my feelings of sadness get mixed in with anxiety and hopelessness.

I start to look at my life, and pick apart all of its flaws. Molehills become mountains. Friends fail to cheer me up. Life, overall, becomes dreary.

The catch?

This doesn’t happen to me in the winter, when it’s more common to feel morbid and bleak.

I feel this way every year when summer starts.

Maybe it’s because I’m a creature of routine. Summer signifies the three months out of the year when everyone’s daily life is thrown off-kilter.

Starting from when you’re a child, you know that summer means three months of no school, no responsibilities, nothing to worry about at all.

The trouble for me was that I never saw any of my friends during the summer. I was shy as a kid, and calling my friends to ask to see them over the summer was nearly impossible for me. So summer meant three months spent by myself. At least during the school year I got to be social.

What good is a pool when you’re the only one in it?

As I got older, I got over being shy, but I still found myself upset at the disruption summer caused in my life.

I was never a beach person. If anything, I’m a homebody, and summer is not the season for homebodies. I found myself appreciating the winter, when if you stay home five nights out of the week to watch television, you’re doing what everybody else is doing. In the summer, there’s a pressure to go out and be active.

Last week, it was nice out and I felt like I had to go out and eat dinner even though it was a weeknight when wanting to stay in should be totally acceptable.

It probably just comes down to endings. Summer, for many of us, always feels like something coming to a close. The year may end in December, but summer is the designated time for change.

This year alone I've had several friends move within a few weeks of each other. I've felt nostalgia at seeing all the graduation photos in the newspapers, which has led me to question whether or not deciding not to go back to graduate school was a good idea. Plus, I'm reminded that I'm about to spend three hot months in a non-air conditioned apartment.

Call me crazy, but in the winter, whenever there's a giant snowstorm, I always feel sort of...at peace.

The entire world is forced to pause and settle in for however long.

Summer just feels...restless.

Luckily, I live in New England, where it's never summer for very long.

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