I’ve Got a Bad Case of the “Should’s”
Finding the Right Words Day #5: SAD
Breaking news! We’re quickly approaching that time of the year where the temperature drops low enough for me to turn my AC off at night. This means summer is almost at an end. I happen to be a summer baby ☀️. I was born shortly after the Summer Solstice, a time of bright sun, warm weather, long days and everyone being outside and having fun.
I hate it. I hate the summertime.
Here’s a little fun fact about me: I get Seasonal Affective Disorder (also known as S.A.D.) in the summertime. Most people associate S.A.D. with the wintertime, when the sun sets absurdly early and we’re forced to spend the majority of the day in darkness, craving vitamin D and the time we used to spend with our friends before the air gets so cold it hurts your face just to open your front door. But me, I look forward to the winter, because it means my season of “shoulds” is in the rearview mirror.
Summer stresses me out, it always has. As a kid, summers were especially hard for my family, it was a time when my mother–a teacher–would be out of work and therefore out of an income, so funds and food were particularly lean in the summer months. As an adult, I still deal with the trauma/memories of those experiences, but now added to that is an intense pressure to make my summers worthwhile. In the…