Winter Blues: Overcoming the Negativity

     January.  Blah.  Nothing happens in January.  The last quarter of the year is filled with activities, parties and lots of food and then it just comes to a complete halt.  Deadness.  January is statistically the most depressive month of the year.  Not much to celebrate, no parties and we have gained ten pounds from always stating, "one more chocolate ball won't hurt."

  Last January, yours truly came down with a case of  the winter blues.  Again, I found myself in that all too familiar place after surgery.  That two week slump I could see coming, yet somehow managed to slip into each time.  I can say I never wallowed around in it, but I was partially coated in that dreary muck that lived in that slump I was speaking of. The anxiety I feel each time I pull myself down from the pain meds, the frustration of repeatedly losing the ability to walk and my coveted independence.
  

     To make matters worse there must have been a beacon over my home for negative individuals to come cast their spell of pessimism.  My goodness, I know by now that each person we come into contact with teaches us something about life, but why at that singular crossroad did they have to be sent?  I was already down and why send a couple of those gloomy souls so close together in time?  Those people need to be spaced out some.

     Near the end of my two week despondency, lying in bed around eleven thirty at night, feeling so low, so tired of going through this, so fed up with counteractive personalities, yet not willing to give up, words of my own began controlling my attention.  Those words met up and assembled themselves into an oppressive poem.  Writing poetry had been a past time, before kids, before a career, before my life became so entangled into the business of making a living that it came as a surprise to me that my mind conjured this up.

 Distrust in the Darkness

The stress is killing me

softly as I sleep

The stress is eating at me

slowly as I weep

It's there every night and every day

I beg. Please, please...please go away

Do I let it consume me

or do I keep fighting til the end?

I'm tired, so tired

do I have anything left to defend?

I do, I know this to be true

I'm tired, what more do I have to prove?

To myself, to others?

They don't realize I can be weak

I can do no right

so I turn the other cheek

Do I stand and fight

or do I give in?

I know the answer

I just don't know if I can.

     You can view above the exact conversation I was having with myself that night, only I did not talk to myself in a rhyming fashion.  Why were those gloomy souls introduced into my life at that crossroad?  Exactly that, because I was at a crossroads.  They were going to push me toward one side or the other.  It was up to me which way I let them push me.  Do I wade into the cold waters of misery with the group of cynics that dwelled there or do I grip the muddy sides of my slump, get a little dirty and claw my way out?   I knew the answer to my question, I believe most of us do, it's just do we have the strength to keep doing it? 

     Telling myself that everything is seen better by the morning light, I  promised that I would awake with a strong determination and a renewal of faith in my person.  

What did I learn from those prophets of doom?

They taught me to believe in myself the most, that life is always my choice and that inspiration can even come from them.  It sparked me to fight against their dismal outlook, to shut out the nay sayers and they motivated  me to write this poem that will now be published twice.  

Ninety-nine percent of the time I take the high road, but there are times you just want to look at those wishing for your failure, stick out your tongue and say, "Watch me" and maybe

 

 

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