Living with holiday depression

I can frame the hardest month of the year for me by the dates of Nov. 20 and Dec. 25. For me, it’s a month punctuated by anniversaries, holidays and the sun’s low position in the sky that contribute to feelings of depression.

Each year, the Transgender Day of Remembrance (Nov. 20) begins my hard month. It’s a memory of those lost that haunts not only me, but many in the trans community. We lose so many in the trans community due to violence born of antitransgender hate. It’s a weighty day not just for me, but for many of my trans peers.

The next day that wears on me during this hard month is Thanksgiving. My personal history with the day is it being one of family gatherings. Due to my transition, my relationship with my family of origin has strained past the breaking point. I miss the feelings I shared with that portion of my family. Thanksgiving for me now has an element of longing to it – a wish I could be truly thankful for sharing time together with my family of origin.

The day after Thanksgiving, often referred to by the title Black Friday for being the traditional kick-off day for the Christmas shopping season, is a black day for me for different reasons. In 2009, I had a friend of mine commit suicide on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

When I think of my friend who’s gone, I often think about Jackson Browne’s “A Song For Adam” – a song about a friend of Browne’s who’s said to have committed suicide. In the last stanza of that song, Browne wrote, “I’m holding out my only candle / Though it’s so little light to find my way / Now this story’s been laid beneath my candle / And it’s shorter every hour / As it reaches for the day / Yes, I feel just like a candle in the way.” My friend’s passing is tragic in its own terms, but I feel her passing inside me too as a warning about how easily, in the depths of my own depressions, I can blow out my only candle and end my life just as my friend did.

Then there’s AIDS Awareness Day Dec. 1, and I think about how many in my community who live with HIV, probably more than those I’ve known who’ve passed from it.

Then there’s Dec. 9. For me it’s an anniversary day for a relationship that ended very, very badly. That relationship is the only relationship of any sort in the entirety of my life where a person I loved told me they never wanted to speak to me again. And when I asked why, the answer I heard was “I don’t think discussing it would be helpful,” and then gave me no reason. She was half-right: it wouldn’t have been helpful for her to discuss why she was ending the relationship, but it would’ve been helpful for me.

Then there’s the days leading to Christmas.

I have seasonal affection disorder, or SAD. For those with SAD, the lessened sunlight in fall and winter has a direct relationship to seasonal depression. People with bipolar conditions – such as I do – often have SAD, and have the depression end of their mood swings deepened by it. I personally find that as the amount of sunlight decreases after Daylight Savings Time kicks in, my fall and early event related depressions are kicked deeper than other event related depressions I feel throughout the year.

Plus, Christmas shopping crowds give me anxiety – and that’s in the medical sense of anxiety. It’s just something about large, unfocused crowds that can leave me a quaking mess.

And lastly, there’s Christmas – a day I remember my emotionally distant family in a similar way to how I remember it on Thanksgiving.

I’m not the only one who finds themselves depressed during the holiday seasons, for sure. What gets me through my difficult month each year is the love I share with friends and the family I’m still connected to.

A hard month each year survived by love. As long as I feel that love, I know I won’t be putting out my only candle.