rage against the spring sunshine

seasonal affective Dylan Thomas

Sometimes when the sun comes out, all I feel is grief and rage.

When the sun is shining, things are better. I am a better person — happier, of course, but so much more. I am more engaged, more present, more generous; the horizons of my life are wider. I am more complex, more thoughtful. The sun coming out and the daylight extending makes me feel, truly, like life has started. It is hard to explain just how different life feels between winter and spring.

I tell myself every year to be patient, to use the time when the sun is away to take stock. An old friend of mine used to say “learn from the winter trees” — in winter, it seems like trees are dead, but they’re surviving, preparing, strengthening themselves. Every year I tell myself I’ll be a good winter tree, but part of me hopes that I won’t need to be: that I’ll manage to keep my mood, my horizons, my sense of self, all flourishing and evergreen through the winter. Every year I fight so hard, line up my powerful lamps, write my little journal entries, use my strategies, regulate, regulate. And then the sun comes out from behind a cloud and laughs at me. Look how easy it was for me to fix you, it says. Look how impossible for you to fix yourself.

So I rage at the sun for ever going away, and I rage at myself for depending on it. I rage at the wasted potential and the miserable predictability. Yes, I’ve tried SAD lamps. No, it’s not practical to move to Italy.

This year is the first time I’ve felt this feeling to its fullest, been able to name it. I know the answers to it, the ways I should soothe myself. You are still a person in the winter. You don’t have to be productive all the time. Not to mention the obvious: there is no point raging against the earth orbiting the sun. You might as well rage against… well. The ad absurdum has written itself.

You don’t need to tell me this is not a logical feeling. But part of experiencing feelings to their fullest, it seems, is spending time in their illogic. Refusing to apologise for it. So I won’t. I will bask in my rage, and then I will bask in the sunshine, and try not to get burned by either one.