Summertime sadness

Summertime and sadness. Two things that feel like they shouldn’t go together. Two things that often do, at least for me. I don’t think how I feel is exactly what Lana Del Rey was singing about, but her famous song is definitely an indication that there’s something to be said here.

The sun is screaming outside, “Come out, come play, come marvel at the world in hyper-sunlit detail” and sometimes I wish I could dim it with a remote, that I could go hide in a cave and hibernate the way bears do in winter. Did you know that just as there is winter seasonal affective disorder, summer seasonal affective disorder has also been diagnosed? Or, could the partial source of the sadness be that we are living in an extremely painful season for the planet and humanity and some of us are feeling it on an almost cellular level? Climate crises are raging, billionaires are deadset on making the planet uninhabitable as long as they continue to profit, oligarchies are popping up, fascists are subverting democracy and human rights left, right and centre. AI and data centres are bulldozing ahead with arrogant and blatant disregard for ethics, environmentalism and privacy, and a whole whack of lies. My country is on fire. Your country is on fire. Everything is on fire. It feels like we are coming to the hilt of something. It also feels like it’s scarily impossible to know what the tipping point is (though many silenced scientists have warned us of it) and to know what further destructive forces are lurking just around the corner. Working class people have been thrown into a discount bin at a store where only the richest profit. I would have to physically, mentally and emotionally NUMB myself to not feel sad right now. To not feel agonizingly angry and (some days) hopeless right now. And then, on top of it all, there’s that pesky sun, outside, inviting me, mocking me.

My family and I are currently at a family friend’s gorgeous cottage. Sounds great, right? Would be, except that our sweet three-year-old son brought along a special surprise friend; the daycare plague to end all daycare plagues which has had me bedridden, quarantined and feverish for three days straight, with a throat that feels like a glass factory, and hours away from a walk-in clinic, and my beloved Netflix. And why shouldn’t I be suffering rolling fevers, at the same time as our precious planet is?

Why am I telling you this? To whine? Maybe. To commiserate with anyone who might understand? Likely. To give you permission to also be living it up in the summer doldrums? Yes, absolutely. I feel like a sad bedridden Victorian waif listening to the sounds of children laughing out of my open window, and watching the world pass me by.

I wrote a poem about summertime sadness a year ago and I’d love to share it with you now, especially if someone needs it:

If you’re struggling this summer too, and in the Northern hemisphere like me, let me assure you, with absolutely no toxic positivity, and only tepid hope, that there are greyer, cooler days ahead. Days that offer more nuance than an interrogation light straight to the eyeballs. Rainy days. Days that invite introspection and tears and tea. Cardigan days. Inbetween days. Days that invite you to feel sad right along with them.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about and yearning for, well, go enjoy your sun and patio drinks and leave us moody poets to our ponderings ;).

I’m sick and I’m tired, and I’m thinking of you, reader. I’m sending you my love, garbled and semi-incoherent as it is in this fever. These are hard days for us sensitive souls. I see you.

Thanks for reading and thanks, as always, for being here.