This Autumn, take your Black Dog for a Shame-free walk

Finally, it’s that time of year again. When the darkness eats away at the daylight hour with an almighty, tireless hunger. Leaves turn brown, fall to the ground and all that was once green seems to have withered away overnight. The temperature drops as gale force winds threaten to lift you up and carry you off to destinations unknown should you fail to find your centre of gravity whenever you venture outside. The cold forces its way into your spine, determined to settle there until the sun gets some of its strength back. And the darkness… The darkness is everywhere… And, if only for a brief spell, we are all the same.

I take great solace in the darkness.

Still there? Good. Believe it or not, this isn’t as sad a post as it may seem – quite the opposite, actually. And, I’ll have to point out that I’m not trying to make light of seasonal affective disorder here, rather, I’m trying to analyse the sort of lift the darker season has on my own well-being as a long-time sufferer of chronic depression. Autumn ushers in the opportunity for me to walk my rather enormous, clumsy and rarely loveable black dog with my head held somewhat high. Together, we can walk among the living without drawing too much attention to ourselves. Hell, we might even feel a sense of belonging for a second or two.

Depression never really goes away, it seems. It’s always there, lurking, biding its time, always ready to pounce when the time is right. But we do get to enjoy a break away from the whipping post from time to time. Autumn has been that time for me, for as long as I can remember. Spring and the beginning of Summer is the opposite. I suspect it’s the pressure of the expectation that you’re meant to be happy all the time, just because the sun’s out for a few more minutes more than the day before. “How can you be so sad when everyone else is enjoying themselves? Cheer up!” they’ll say. Little do they know that those words just makes it worse.

Yes, I can see that ‘everyone’ else is having a great time, for no apparent reason. This only makes me feel left out, frustrated that I’m unable to drag myself up from the abyss, even sadder that happiness doesn’t come so easily to me. It makes me fearful. I stare so hard out the window of the bus my eyes start to water, just to avoid accidentally locking eyes with some poor soul and somehow infect them with my inner demons. Always afraid I might drag someone down with me, just by daring to think I should be allowed to exist among them when I am like this.

Then, Summer turns dirty, grimy, too much – just like me – and the first great flood comes to cleanse us of our sins and wash it all away. With the deluge comes the crisp, clean autumn air. Everything starts dying. The seemingly endless summer nights are no longer as long or inviting as they used to be. No one’s jetting off on holidays or returning from one, looking as if they’ve been laid out on the Weber gas BBQ for a fortnight. Instead, they’ve retrieved their cardigans from the back of their wardrobe, stopped shaving and started making up excuses to avoid socialising.

Me? I can finally breathe. I can leave the house after 7pm without bringing two pairs of sunnies, a hat, brolly and/or a party burka (if all else fails). I no longer have to be afraid I’ll ruin someone’s good mood, just by being myself – everyone is already miserable by the time they run into me. So I start looking forward to the little allowances the colder weather brings along with it, like being able to cover my flaws in layers and layers of clothing, hiding my bad hair days in woolly hats and my face in scarves, lighting my candles and watching all of the Friday the 13th films in one sitting, the appropriateness of having a nip of whisky to warm up when the heater’s on the fritz and knowing that I will be left alone until the sun rises again, give or take 6 months from now. And I can let my dog off his lead for now. I never asked for this dog anyway.

I’ll see you next Tuesday. Until then, chew on this: