Hello There

In two weeks, it will officially be autumn. The daily weather might not think so, but the fall equinox is the fall equinox and the temperature can suck it if it doesn’t want to get on board.

I have been gone from this newsletter all summer because I have been gone from myself all summer. There’s a Georgia O’Keeffe quote, or maybe it’s Sylvia Plath (or Kurt Cobain, 1994), that reads, “I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.” Preach, Georgia. This is a feeling I know well.

It is an odd thing to be annually depressed in the summertime. I’m like a character from an early 90s movie where you read the script and immediately cast Janeane Garofalo. It is utterly off-putting to be moody and miserable when the sun is out and everyone else is trying to enjoy bare legs, cold beers, and casual social gatherings. Yuck, social gatherings. Please kill me.

There is no reason for my particular seasonal dysfunction beyond the most basic and fundamental reason for feeling depressed: I suffer from depression. I just happen to suffer from it worse in summer than I do at any other time of year. I don’t know why. It’s true that I don’t love the heat, but that’s not really it. I’m used to heat. And yes there are too many things going on in the summer and I find that exhausting, but mostly I find it exhausting because I’m already depressed and everything is more exhausting when you’re depressed.

The sun sets so late, the days are so long and that’s so many extra hours of having to pretend to be in good spirits. Of having to perform being happy and friendly and up for anything. I am up for nothing. I spend my whole summer acting my ass off and it is fucking exhausting.

Oh, how I miss the sweet, beautiful normalcy of a winter depression. The time of year when even the mentally healthy like to dabble in a little mid-January moodiness and act like we’re all in this together. It gets dark at 4pm and you can wear sweatpants all day and if your eyes are sunken and your skin is sallow and you’re barely holding back tears, it’s no big deal because you’re not killing the vibe, baby you are the vibe! It’s winter! Come join the collective unraveling!

But nobody wants their summer fun dampened by your ill-timed serotonin imbalance. So I trudge along all summer, covered in sweat and bug spray, my mind secretly whirring with suicidal fantasies.

In July, we spent a week vacationing on a lake, and I told my husband that I wanted to fill my pockets with stones and walk into the water a la Virginia Woolf. He took one look at what I was wearing and said, “Your pockets aren’t big enough to make that happen.”

This is a little game we play. I tell him how I’m fantasizing about my own death and he points out all the impracticalities of my plan that is never really a plan.

Foiled again, I joked, and then changed into my bathing suit so that we could go swimming.

Now summer is nearly done, and as the days shorten, my patience lengthens. Cool mornings bring bursts of creative energy. At my son’s evening soccer practices I walk around an asphalt track listening to music. When the sun dips below the trees, a slight chill greets my bare arms. It is wonderful and with each step, I get a little closer to finding myself again

One positive thing about this summer was that I had multiple opportunities to share aloud poems from my collection, April and Back Again. A big thanks to everyone who came to those readings and to Snowfort Books, Greedy Reads, Judy Kurjan-Frank, and Annie Stone for making those readings possible. Sharing this book has been the highlight of my year. If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, you can order one from the button below, or at your favorite indie bookstore.

Thank you, as always, for reading and for all your support.

P.S. Another positive thing from this summer: I got to witness a lot of stellar cloud and mountain combinations.

You can find more of my writing & contact information at clairemtaylor.com. If you’d like to further support my work, please consider purchasing one of my books, or a copy of Little Thoughts Press. I also have a ko-fi page.