By Rachael Himsel
For people like me who just want to curl up in a ball under a blanket and hibernate in the coldest months, it’s not about winter doldrums - it’s about winter SOULDRUMS. A deep exhaustion, sometimes with a side of dread - the souldrums. My skin changes, my joints hurt more than any other time of year… a coldness of the soul - the souldrums. And it’s not just middle age, because these feelings, these mental feelings have happened for years and years. I was initially diagnosed with major depressive disorder in my late 20s. I’d spent a lot of my life crying and feeling like I wasn’t good enough, that just about every other human being was better than I was in Some Important Way.
This belief was solidified when I came to accept that most humans are better than - or at least, different than me - in Some Very Important Way, actually - in their ability to have children. Unlike the vast majority of humans (85%), I was not able to have kids, and also did not belong to the subset that did not want / chose not to have children. I wanted kids, but the universe said, nope. I look back at how depressed I was, and almost all of it was because I felt like others around me were easily falling in love, easily getting married, easily having kids. Though many in my family and friend circle have had losses, most have been able to eventually have children. Due to circumstance and genes, it never happened - even though I got to the point of really believing that miracles could happen and I could still get pregnant at 37…sure! 38, 39… 40? Mary was a virgin when she had Jesus! Miracles can happen! 41. 42. 43. Ok…44, 45, 46? Hmmm…Ok, closing shop! That’s a wrap!
I like that I am able to talk about this with some humor, because the attachment I had for the life I wanted, the life I dreamt of, wasn't healthy. The attachment I had to those dreams come through to me as I work on a musical I started writing 20+ years ago with my best friend lisa. My fiance Vahan, a brilliant musician and composer, is helping us take the music across the finish line. As I read lyrics I wrote all those years ago, decades ago, I see the naivete… the hopefulness that can only exist in musicals, fairy tales, and bibles.
Why am I able to see through these dreams, at last? How can I see through them? When others, for sure, tried to tell me in the past? Perhaps I had to grow up and fall in love with an atheist and end up at a state park with another best friend on Christmas day in a state thousands of miles away from where I was born.
As I sat at Silver Springs Lodge in Oregon’s largest state park, I sipped hot cocoa and playing bananagrams with my longtime friend Mel. Having bonded over our love of writing, volunteering, and the arts, we both wrote for the same arts magazine while living in Bloomington, Indiana, and danced, sang, and played together often. With both of us transplanted thousands of miles from where we met for totally different reasons, I looked at my dear friend, took a deep breath and appreciated how far I'd come. Literally, figuratively. I had somehow, safely and on the backs and with the help and support of so many hands of humanity, hands of teachers and sisters and brothers and family and friends and some spirit that we keep trying to name, i’d come here, to oregon. Not only had I come to Oregon, I'd come here free of so much fear that had been instilled in me since childhood.
‘Christmas is a pagan holiday’ I grew up hearing, in my doomsday cult that did not allow celebrations of Christmas, Easter, or most cool holidays.
I remember standing in 6th grade and the teacher asking students to debate this question:
Should people tell children Santa Claus is real or not?
Of course, I believed lying in any, way shape or form was a sin, so I knew where I landed on this one - easy, don’t tell them about that pagan god, Santa Claus aka St. Nick aka the Devil!
So I was ready. Debates were my thing. Debates were when I really paid attention. I deeply wanted to hear what other people thought - I’d only heard the doctrine of the Worldwide Church of God every day of my life outside of school, so I needed these debates, I valued my classmates and their dissent - mostly gentle, occasionally derisive but mostly respectful, and often more respectful than I was in my smug knowledge that I was god’s chosen one, that my family and I would get to go the place of Safety when the end came, all for the low low price of 10% of my parents’ income! sorry you can’t come too, space is limited.
I don’t remember if I lost the debate or not. I just remember that people felt strongly about this holiday, and I needed to pay attention - because people cared deeply about this Santa figure, and we all cared about Christ, so at least we had that in common. I focused on our common ground - Jesus - and went on to sing in madrigals and choirs in high school, and ‘Ave Maria’ even became my torch song. I learned that my mom had almost become a nun, so she loved my singing these songs. My dad, a Lutheran before he heard the radio ads for the cult he and my mom joined, also enjoyed the song and recorded me singing it at various concerts and competitions.
I sang with my heart. I sang with my soul. I sang to keep the souldrums away.
This winter, at Silver Springs Lodge, Mel and I walked out into the cold Oregon air. We walked behind a waterfall, and the rush and mist made us feel alive and small. We smiled, we hugged, and we breathed it all in.
It was December 25th, and I marveled at the path that took me out of southern Indiana to the cold stones behind a waterfall in Oregon… a path paved in love and friendship. I didn’t think once about Santa or Jesus or anything other than the joy of that moment in nature with my friend.
I don’t remember what we sang, as we walked down the path, but I'm fairly certain we sang. I sang with my heart, I sang with my soul.
And, together with my friend, we kept the souldrums away.
Best Christmas ever.
Image via iFunny