Blog a la Cart

The sun was out today. Just picture me like a cat curled up on a window sill, delighting in those beams. I found inane excuses to leave the office just so I could soak up as much of her rays as humanly possible. I totally needed to make that trip home to pour myself a second cup of coffee. (The office coffee maker is legitimately terrible, so it seems like a perfectly reasonable endeavor to walk home for a refill).

I could feel my mood lighten, and I have verifiable evidence of this shift in attitude from he-who-suffers-most at the hand of my SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder).

Side note: Is that not the best acronym ever for a mental illness? It so aptly and accurately describes what happens during these gray winter months. I’m SAD. Pathetically, miserably, wearing-only-gray-to-match-the-desolate-conditions SAD. Picture me, unshowered, pathetically whimpering and playing Snood day in and day out while shoving bars of chocolate into my gullet. It is a SAD SAD picture indeed. (And one we were able to avoid three winters living in Southern California).

I am so very grateful to James for his unwavering and unconditional love and support during these grayer moments. He can instantly sense when I start to falter and most importantly, knows how to call me out on my shit in way that won’t result in me hurling a jar of pickles through the kitchen and reenacting scenes from The Exorcist. He ensures that I make it to the gym for a good ol’dose of endorphins (even if it requires physical force to get me in spandex – a tricky feat indeed), draws baths so that I can escape in the quiet of the tub, orders and installs sun lamps, gets me to laugh even when I am being a total bear and I’m spitting fire and hurling insults and refusing to cooperate.

I’m always so aware that during those moments he is making an active choice to love me. He’s harnessing ever fiber of his being to remain calm and rational and sweet so that I don’t spiral into unstoppable depths of crazy – and he is making a choice. A very conscious choice. To support me. To love me. To be that partner he promised he’d be one rainy September evening. Because at the end of the day, marriage and love is a choice. The falling in love part was easy – it happened within days of meeting one another. And it was exciting and scary and exhilarating and happened without effort. Now’s the real test of that love.  The choosing to survive the rough stuff because the good stuff makes it all worth while. This is what makes you stronger and what makes you come out the other side and love one another all the more.

Sometimes in the middle of the night I’ll wake and feel his forehead nestled against the center of my shoulder blades and I have to catch my breath, I am that caught off guard by how unbelievably lucky I am to have that person not just by my side, but on my side.

Now, more than ever, he and I realize that I cannot indulge the gray. I need to rise above, cope, get help, and function so that my daughter doesn’t lose the mother that I know I am when not weighed down with sadness. Thank god for this man and his lifeline to that part of me that would otherwise be lost.

Bebe, I could never say it enough, you’re my gravity.