Today is Friday May 15 and another day of dreary skies and hard rain.
Grrrrr.
Ever since I got to Austin in the beginning of October there has been more grey skies and rain that I though possible. Memories of the Pacific Northwest come flooding back to me and that is not a good thing.
I remember the first time I noticed how depressed rain makes me feel. I was on a bus coming back from a marching band trip when I was a senior in high school. We were coming back from a competition in Eastern Washington and I was watching the rain dance in a zombie conga line along the top edge of the window. I felt drained, mentally claustrophobic and emotionally dead inside. It must have been overcast for a while because I was thinking to myself – when will this ever end.
I didn’t realize at the time, but I am very sensitive to multiple days of overcasts skies. I also didn’t realize the extent that I suffered from depression – that wouldn’t start coming out for another 2 years and wouldn’t be properly managed for another 13.
Back to the rain and flooding in Goliad – I’m good for about 2 days of gray skies – than it starts grinding on me. Each day brining me down lower than the next if I’m not careful. My brain starts to slow down, thinking gets cloudy, my patience wears thin and I pull inwards and away from people. To combat it I need to exercise as much as possible and lighten up on the thinking – especially the introspection, of which I habitually do too much of anyway.
I’m curious if my desire to live in the gray accentuates the problem? Us humans are complicated creatures and our motivations for doing what we do is often a mystery to ourselves and others. Put us together in a social group – family, tribe, town, city, country add in varying personal, political and religious philosophies, affiliations and beliefs – and it gets even more complicated.
Not to mention that fact that we all have baggage from our upbringings to sort through and reconcile as we become adults with some people’s baggage being much heavier than others.
It’s no wonder we have so much struggle to find personal truth and social harmony.