Today is Blue Monday, an accumulation of all the sad all the time (a combo of post-holiday blues, guilt over abandoned New Year's resolutions, the weather, and everything else: the pandemic, new variants, and you name it!). Blue Monday was created by a traveling agency (everything is a lie) who claimed to come up with a formula singling out this saddest day of the year—in reality, they were probably trying to sell food-poisoning-All-Inclusives, which is fine.
The good thing is, people use Blue Monday to talk about depression so if you need a special day to feel permitted to do so, today is the day. I mean, you should always feel like you can talk about whatever is bothering you but very few people do. Most of us need a holiday to be a certain way, like Christmas to try to be nice to your family. Here’s your holiday to feel not nice and talk about it.
I watched a sweet video this morning of this kid who has a severe physical disability and who has spent his entire life in a wheelchair, breathing tube and a feeding tube included. He’s in arts and culture, funny on-camera, he’s in a happy relationship, he’s honest and cool, and just an overall interesting, chill guy. He talked about the reasons why he rarely gets depressed. He said, “My mother taught me to always have a positive outlook on life, and my father taught me to treat problems as personal challenges.”
When my son was one, I got sober after a year of alcoholic relapse. I was very worried that I fucked him up for good so when I had a chance to speak to Gabor Mate about addiction, I asked him what he thought our chances were to come out of it all relatively unscathed. He told me that as long as my son had someone in his corner to love him unconditionally and make him safe, he was going to be okay. Sometimes all you need is only one person in your life to protect you from the pitfalls of mental anguish.
Maybe you don’t have a person right now or maybe you never did. Maybe your parents taught you to be scared, rather than be brave. I thought about that this morning; my own experience hasn’t been the most positive. I was taught fear and mistrust.
But I am no longer depressed, I very rarely get blue. Today is a Snowstorm Day not a Blue Monday, to me. I am excited to go outside and lie in a fresh batch of white powder (not a lame nod to cocaine, I do mean snow), maybe go tobogganing with my son, take some pictures of white dragons and elephants lost in dreams.
In September I had a breakthrough. After listening for so long, I finally heard all those cheesy adages that tell you to be a friend to yourself, to love yourself, to try to manifest your own good mood… I finally started to feel differently about my circumstances and surroundings. I stopped seeing things as problems but rather saw them as challenges. And I listened to something my 12-year-old told me—he said, he “felt amazing and happy to wake up every morning!” At first, I laughed about it, called him cute and naïve but after a while, when he’d say the same thing ever time during our end-of-day roundup, I started to really imagine what it would be like to wake up and feel amazing and happy to be alive every morning. I made effort to try to imagine that feeling. And, eventually, I felt it with my mind, my soul, my spirit and I just did what I was taught in recovery: I faked it till I made it. And one day, I woke up excited—with nothing noteworthy happening on the horizon, no reason to feel good about being stuck at home forever, no solid explanation for my good mood. But instead of dwelling on this, the way I tend to, I just got up, had breakfast and said, fuck it with a smile on my face. Then I did it again the next morning. And again. It’s like training for anything—you develop muscles. In this case, some kind of a spiritual muscle that makes these long, boring, terrible pandemic days somewhat survivable.
These days, I strive to have a positive outlook on life. I’m a parent to myself in the way that my parents haven’t been and it’s fine, it’s nice and the point—the point is that it’s never too late to do this! I promise you. At 44, I am not exactly Polyannna, but I am truly happy to get up each morning. And you can too.
If you woke up struggling and dreading the day, honestly, I promise you that you’ve absolutely nothing to lose by opening your lovely eyes tomorrow and forcing yourself to feel that everything is amazing and you’re happy to be awake. It might get weird and stupid for some of you for the first few mornings but eventually you’ll manage to trick yourself into authentic happiness.
Now, once you feel it—really feel it and concentrate on that feeling, memorize it in your body, in your mind… bottle it, keep it, and it’ll eventually get bigger and bigger and you won’t even have to remember to do it, it’ll start to happen naturally. (Also, baths during the day. With candles and plinky-plonky music and bath salts. So good.)
"to awake forever in a sweet unrest," lovely thanks for this today. Afternoon baths are glorious, absolutely agree about that too.