Is commuting the answer?

When I say that living with dysthymia is liking living in a bog, I mean this: the near-constant low levels of depression can make simple  tasks seem impossible, can make all of life slow... as if I am waking through thick muck. And I suppose in a way I am: in life I walk painfully and slowly through the thick muck of my affect. But there is also the constant sense that at any moment I might get sucked down by the muck, that I will not be able to keep my head above the bog in the clear light. I feel like depression is always waiting. So my metaphor is about to be mangled: is depression the bog? Or is depression some creature in the bog, lurking below my line of sight, constantly shadowing me, waiting to grab me and pull me under?


This all comes up because Thursday, two days ago, I began sliding down into depressive feelings and thoughts. The cause of all this? Well, we know that dysthymia and depression often have no links to life events. But we also know that there are factors external to the mind. One is light. Thursday was cloudy, cold, windy and bitter. I am not ready for that kind of weather! Friday was cloudy as well. But by Thursday night I was already overwhelmed by hopelessness. What, I kept asking myself, do I have to look forward to? What joy am I ever going to experience? And at several moments my thoughts returned to death. I imagined myself on the bridge over the river that runs through town. The sidewalk is narrow, the guard rail between the sidewalk and the plunge to the water surprising low for our time of hyper-safety. One just need fall forward. It would be effortless! But I'm not a fan of gasping for air; drowning does not sound pleasant, though they say it is not so bad once your lungs fill with water. "They", whoever the hell they are. As if "they" have drowned. But I suppose enough people have experienced the filling of the lungs, the extinguishing of consciousness, and have been revived the tell of the experience. I could, also, from that same sidewalk, merely fall backwards into the path of an oncoming car.  But I would not want to give some poor driver post-traumatic stress syndrome. And with my luck I would just come out badly injured! A paraplegic, suddenly incapable of exercising the most fundamental freedom, the freedom to take my own life.  THAT would be depressing, indeed.

But what I really want to express here is my extreme annoyance at having my mind, my soul, my very identity,  held hostage to the weather, especially to the presence or absence of the sun. It is an a appalling indignity, having my affect—my mood, my sense of self, my sense of place in the world, even the clarity of my cognition (which suffers greatly on these days when I don't receive sufficient sunlight) so subject to the whims of atmospheric conditions. We in the "West"  have lied to ourselves for several thousand years, convincing ourselves that we are autonomous entities, defined from within. I do not believe it anymore.

All of which has me wondering: is there a place where the sun never stops shining? Not literally; night is good. But rather a place where the sun is mostly available to keep me tethered to some appreciation for  life? Wherever there is the most sun, that is where I need to be. Maybe I should commute between Norway and Tierra del Fuego twice a year, migrate from summer to summer, so I always have the long days.  When I consider the downside—that there is NOTHING in those places for me, including no family or friends, no prospect of a sense of belonging—it seems not all that different from being here. I know from my travels that it is better to be alienated in a place where I have no expectations of belonging, than to be alienated at "home" where the dense background of familiarity, from the voices of the people to the colors and textures of the trees in autumn, is a constant reminder that I remain nonetheless a stranger. If a person doesn't feel at home anywhere, can it really matter where one calls home??