Sunday, March 01, 2009

In Like a Lamb

For all of you who care about the weather and the fact that it is the first of March, I am pleased to announce that we started the month with a beautiful day. Our temperatures actually got as high as -3 (almost spring jacket time).

You could feel the sense of excitement in the air… the anticipation that our long dark winter might soon be drawing to a close. It is still a little early to expect a full onset of spring, but the sense of hope has begun. Everyone has started to peek their heads out of their homes again. The streets were busier with pedestrians, while the buses seemed to have a little more room (I wasn’t standing in some man’s arm pit with a woman’s purse pushing into my bottom). Not only did the weather seem more open, so did the general population’s mood.

This lightness of heart is really absent here over the winter. I feel like we all live under the same dark cloud of gloom. I remember the first time I heard some one talk about seasonal depression. I thought it was just a hoax, made up by people who were to scared to handle a real Canadian Winter. I need to publically apologise to all of you, for so drastically underestimating the seriousness of this condition. Since living here and suffering through the dark winter, when the sun can’t shine through the pollution ( a Canadian paper recently list the city I live in as one of the top most polluted in the world), when temperatures of -15 seem like a fairly nice day, or when all of our friends would just rather stay inside than endure the elements to come and visit you (mind you I only offered them to come over, so that I didn’t have to get bundled up in my winter gear to go to their place), I have had to face the reality of seasonal depression. It has never gotten to the point I can’t get out of bed, or function through daily activities, but everything I do in the winter feels like it is being done in slow motion, under a black cloud. And it is not just me, it is the whole city, we have a population of between 3-5 million people and we almost all collectively spend the winter struggling with feeling down.

But some how the darkness of those long winter days, make a day like today, days when March comes in like a gentle lamb, seem even more refreshing and reviving.

2 comments:

Dave said...

i'm so glad the "darkness" is starting to lift...its not as cold here - but i've never lived anywhere where i have gone so long without seeing the sun. For a girl born and raised in the tropics its about killing me!

~ Amanda ~ said...

oh, how i can identify with you in this! so glad march started well.