The sun is already setting sooner and sooner, catching me off guard. I see it is pitch dark by 7:30 pm. A panic goes through me and I find myself gasping to catch my breath as well as my mental bearing. The fear that time is passing, that I cannot slow down the impending early sunsets, is terrifying.
Many people have natural seasonal “depression.” It is easy to mourn the endless light of the summer when you know the sun will set at around 4:30 pm versus the 9 pm we frolicked in just a few months ago. It is easy to feel down or unmotivated, as it seems the world’s lights have been turned off. Bouts of adventure can be squashed by an early sunset.
Until about two years ago, I used to have plain seasonal depression in the first few weeks of Fall, until I would learn to enjoy the quiet and cozy darkness that paired well with the chill in the air.
Two winters ago, I was with an emotionally abusive boy, whose abuses and betrayals lined up with the start and continuation of the shorter days. It seemed like each week, towards the evening, which was creeping earlier and earlier each day, he would present me with a new emotional anguish, a new instance in which he would gaslight me and leave me devastated, a new situation where I would beg for his mercy to stop. Of course, he did not, and repeated the abuse the next week, his increasing maliciousness matching the darkness in the sky. I naturally looked back on better days, which happened to be the summer days. Calculate a few more associations, and my happiness, which I would beg God to grant me again, were paired with those long, carefree days. During that winter, it seemed as though my happiness was dwindling, so were the hours of the day. It seemed that each day was drawing further from my happiness. The passing of time scared me, made me fear that I was drawing away from something I would never recover, or return to.
I became obsessed with each minute of daylight lost, obsessively looking up when days would get longer, counting down the days and minutes. The following Spring, as I appreciated the 6 and 7 pm sunsets, I would catch myself looking ahead, searching when the days would get shorter again, mourning the lost minutes before they even happened. The numbers on the screen indicating the sunset times alone were enough to cause me severe anxiety and mini-panic attacks. I was terrified to feel what I felt that winter again, and through my associations, I felt as though the dark sky would surely bring those feelings to life again.
I am afraid of the dark. I have gotten better, though. Last year, I joined an organization on campus that gave me so many new friends, memories, and genuine happiness, all over the winter months. Not only was I distracted from my fervent anxiety about the impending darkness, but I made new memories, happy ones, a few that overshadowed the deep, terrifying scars of years past. My mind was able to associate a 5pm sunset with walking to class with my friend, able to associate a 4:30pm sunset with eating out with a group of friends, and able associate a seemingly endless night class flirting with a classmate. These memories would appear when my anxiety made me feel that the only thing darkness would bring were the evils of that boy. They reminded me that good, great, sweet things also happen, and had surely happened, during the darkness, too.
I still get panicked. I still have flashbacks, but I also am so grateful that I can look back on the memories I made with my friends.