Depression at the Holidays

NAME: Lily
STATUS: Up to my ears in tinsel
PEEVE: Nail polish that chips
GLEE: Christmas cookies

There are times when it is definitely fine to be single.

The holidays are not one of them.

I guess I’m more “Blue Christmas” than “Winter Wonderland” lately. I don’t have anyone to conspire with by my non-existent fireplace. Truth be told, I don’t even have anyone in particular whose absence I can lament. It’s the sort of omission in my life that seems sharper in such a festive season, when there’s just so much freaking pressure to be merry and bright.

I laughed at the SNL skit about Adele’s “Someone Like You” when I was watching it with my sister, but if I listen to that sad, beautiful song by myself, I really do cry. It just strikes such a chord with me lately. And even though we have all kinds of reasons to be happy this year – we have our new little tater tot to celebrate Christmas with, both my parents are healthy, things are going relatively well – I just can’t get into it.

Instead, all I want to do is sleep. I’m shying away from cocktails, even, because I know alcohol is a depressant, but that sure hasn’t kept me away from the double mocha lattes, and building up a fatty layer around my waistline isn’t doing a thing for my joy, seasonal or otherwise. I hate it when I get like this; I feel like such a loser. And this time of year, especially, the last thing I want to do is burden my family or friends with my woe-is-me mindset.

So I paste on a smile, 24-7. I grit my teeth and fake like I’m happy at my job. I pretend oh-well cheerfulness at my ever-strained finances. I act happy to be a single gal about town. But really? I don’t love my job. It bores me senseless. It underwhelms me. I want OUT, but there’s nowhere to go in this economy, and I honestly can’t see things improving anytime soon. Maybe ever. Who’s to say I’ll ever go back to the kind of fulfilling, albeit stressful, career I once had?

And who’s to say I’ll ever find a decent boyfriend, much less a husband? The dream of having a family someday is starting to feel like an impossible one. What if I never find “the one?” What if I never have a baby?

It all sounds so whiny, I know. It’s a bit like complaining of a hangnail when the guy next to you has cancer. But dang it all, it’s my hangnail, and it hurts. I just want to be happy this Christmas. Apparently, that’s too much to ask. Still, I smile and act like the goofiest elf you ever saw, because I know how much it would upset my family to be any other way. I smile on the outside, even when my heart is kind of breaking on the inside.

And I stage my own little silent protest, my own way of telling the universe how sad I really feel. They asked me to decorate our front desk at work for the holidays; I draped it in blue lights. All my Christmas presents? Wrapped in blue. You don’t even want to see my holiday mix on my MP3; I’ve loaded up every depressing seasonal song I could get my hands on. Because when you really are having a blue, blue, blue Christmas, sometimes the only thing that makes you feel better is a having a good cry while Judy Garland sings a mournful “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in the background.

Check out some straight talk about holiday depression from this week’s guest expert, Scott Ridgway, Executive Director of the Tennessee Suicide Prevention Network.

All the above information has been reviewed by this week’s expert.