Autumn Blues

 September is here and with it brings my annual Autumn and Winter sadness. Not content with being the bane of my life all year round my mental illness likes to pop dark half of the year struggles as a cherry on top.

Obviously my struggles with this time of year go way back, even as a kid I remember feeling sad when the days shortened and the temperature dropped along with the leaves. Most people love Autumn and it's colours and seasonal drinks (pumpkin spiced white hot chocolate if you're offering) and even I 'm not immune to snapping photos of red and orange trees but to me it's a sign of things to come. 

"But Jen" I here you cry "What about Halloween, warm drinks, being cosy?" . Whilst it's true that Halloween is my favourite day of the year and I love decorating for it and, back in more normal times, hosting parties the holiday is about welcoming the dark half of the year and that's what I struggle with.

I think part of the problem is that the UK's Autumns are mostly not the picture postcards of beautiful colours that you see from America but rather battleship grey skies, rain and wind. I can handle the strong winds but I utterly despise rain.

Of course even I can work out where my real psychological problems stem from, nobody needs to be  a genius there, it's the time of skipping off back to school and I don't need to recount everything here but you all know what happened there. Let me explain how big a problem this became. When I was younger we always used to go on holiday to France for the last two weeks of August immediately after the airshow. Whilst I tried so hard to immerse myself in the good times the moment we got on the ferry at Newhaven to go across to Europe my depression would start. 

I used to hate myself for it and think there was something wrong and ungrateful about me for being so unhappy when so many people would have loved to be on holiday with their far. Looking back of course this was my BPD making itself known. In the back of my mind I knew the days were counting down until I'd be returning to my own personal hell. 

Aside from September being 'back to school' it also seems to coincide with other bad times, I don't know if it's all related but two of the times I've been signed off work have been at this time of year.

I think what's making this year a struggle already is my inactivity and losing the energy and confidence to do things over this summer. I feel like I've 'slept through summer' and I know this is no-one's fault but my own but the meds that I'm on plus just sleeping off bad moods have constantly conspired to make staying in bed the only viable option at times. Add to that a second year of a lack of my normal summer activities makes me feel like once again the season has been wasted. Whilst I'm incredibly grateful that I made it to Bournemouth Air show yesterday I've now got 'post fun event' blues to contend with too 🤦.

I'm struggling to cope with the idea of Autumn already and we're only 6 days into September ......

Love Jen

XxxX