coming out of my summer closet... yeah? Okay! I've been cocooning, for lack of a more neurotic term, because summer weather seriously, seriously gets me down - this year worse than ever, it seems. Some explanation follows [warning: long, boring, very long, hot (in the "sweltering" sense), whiny, boring, cry-me-a-river, boring, self-centered. Also? boring.]→[More:]

I remember the first half of my life, when I had the February Blues every year - classic SAD... but living so long in so many hot and sunny places, my SAD syndrome shifted to summer - and August, especially, is death month for me: I have zero motivation, zero energy, pretty much zero interest in anything. I hardly cook or clean, taking a shower is an achievement (don't worry, I manage to do this), I can't work, I can barely communicate.

Don't imagine that I'm huddled in fetal position in my bed for weeks on end, though; I do manage to get up and do the basic minimum, and I don't even really feel absolutely desperate, because I know it will end. When the weather changes. It's sort of like being smothered, except you understand that the pillow will be lifted from your face before you actually die, so you just hang on.

Well, that's not exactly right either, but "being smothered" is the best metaphor that I can come up with for how I feel every summer.

In Thessaloniki, I knew I could start having hope for life after mid-August. Truly, after August 15 (a very big religious holiday here) I could begin to feel the weather changing, little by little, and manage to pull myself up by the seasonal bootstraps to become more fully human again. Here in Athens, it's far less clear when I can begin to have hope. Last year was utterly insane, with record-breaking high temperatures every week for months, so it's not like I have even one normal year to compare this one to. So I've just decided to try to force it.

It's still ridiculously hot and oppressive here, but I've decided that now, a full week after I would have been begun to start feeling a sense of hope in Thessaloniki, and having no other personal data to apply - I'm going to impose it.

As of tomorrow, I am going to try to be "normal" (normal for me, anyway - so, not really normal, so much as not totally abnormal). Even if it's still miserably miserable here, I do honestly believe that September will bring succor, and the days keep trudging towards September... and any minute now I might feel an early breath of Boreas.

Also, for anyone who might worry about these things (I would!), I'm still taking good care of the dog, and also not making my husband suffer. He knows that my light goes out in the hottest part of summer, so he doesn't freak out, and making problems [fucking things up] with him is not part of my pathology, thank goodness.

So, blah, blah, &etc. Still, tomorrow morning I'm going to try very hard to wake up and act like me, whatever the temperature.