Geography

I seem to recall a previous post touting the beauty of Winter, having overcome my prior distaste for it.  And when my neighbor said she had definitely not changed her opinion of Winter which is that she never liked it and always will, I made some condescending comment inferring that she, too, would change her mind when she became a little more evolved, as am I. 

But I think it's getting the best of me, this year.  I'm having a little trouble keeping my normal, sunny disposition about life in general and Winter, in particular.  I'm currently working night shift.  I have three more shifts until I start a new job.  Working at home, in my studio.  Not doing art or writing that book I've had in the back of my mind for decades, but doing telehealth nursing.  I'm not naive enough to not know I'm going to hate it, just as I have every other nursing job.  But I digress.

I sleep all day, now, even on my days off.  I got up at 3pm today, just in time for the rest of the world to start winding down, attuning themselves to the slower, evening hours preceding bedtime.  I went to bed, for the final attempt, at 7:15 a.m. today.  That's not helping the depression. 

I work with a girl who tells me she was "delivered" from her crippling, suicidal depression a couple of years ago.  I kept my skepticism to myself, biting the insides of my cheeks as I frequently need to do, but in a short time, she began sharing what sounded a lot like full-blown depression-inspired thoughts.

I miss my children.  With them gone, there's not much left for me here and yet, considering a move to another state to be closer to them and the rest of my extended family, I find myself queerly sentimental about a place I've railed for the past 2 years of my need to leave. 

I'm going to miss it here.  I've grown up here and it is here I raised my children.  I was born and raised to physiological adulthood in the Midwest but it was here, in the south, I "grew up".  I'm not sure I can effectively separate myself from this place, it is so much a part of who I am, after thirty-five years.  I'm not sure where it stops and I begin. 

It's the unbearable loneliness that drives me to my family.  And yet, I wonder.  Will the move eliminate the loneliness?