On Seasons

When people talk about seasonal affective disorder, they usually mean winter.

Short days. Less light. A kind of heaviness that settles in.

That’s real.

But it isn’t the only pattern.

—

For some, it’s spring.

Not the bloom people expect but the pressure of it.

Everything waking up. Everything moving. Everything insisting on becoming something.

There’s a kind of exposure in that.

A sense that you should be emerging, shifting, responding—

even when something in you isn’t ready.

—

Not all seasons are external.

Some aren’t tied to weather at all.

They’re lived through.

Quietly. Internally. Sometimes out of sync with everything around you.

—

You can be in winter while everything outside says spring.

You can feel the weight of ending while everything insists on beginning.

You can be in a season that doesn’t have a name people recognize.

—

We don’t have good language for that.

So we borrow what exists.

We say “depression” when what we mean might be:

disorientation
overexposure
misalignment
the wrong kind of light at the wrong time

—

Not everything that feels heavy is pathology.

Sometimes it’s timing.

Sometimes it’s contrast.

Sometimes it’s what happens when the world accelerates before you do.

—

Seasons don’t just change around us.

They move through us.

And not always in the order we’re told they should.

—

It helps to notice that.

Not to fix it.

Just to recognize:

this is a season, too.


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