Winter blues have crept up on me this year. Never used to be an issue for me but this year I’m working a lot more hours (my husband lost his job), the days have gotten very short, and our new office has almost no windows, so I haven’t even seen the sun in 10 days. I didn’t realize what was happening at first but I’ve had this general listlessness and malaise over the past week, I got some bloodwork to make sure it wasn’t anemia or a thyroid issue or something (it wasn’t), but last night it just overtook me. I’d gotten home from work, my husband had taken care of pretty much all the housework so there was very little for me to do to keep my mind occupied. I prepared dinner kind of mindlessly, but as I was taking the chicken out of the oven, my chest tightened, tears just flooded into my eyes and down my cheeks. By the time I had put the baking sheet down and taken off my oven mitt so i could wipe my cheeks, I think I had already shed at least 3 tears from each eye. I halfheartedly tried some of the usual ways to stop the tears, but quickly realized that it wasn’t going to happen. I pulled out some plates, which got my daughter’s attention (because I usually ask her to help take the plates to the table), but she noticed my tears and asked if I needed to go to the “cry chair”

Some background for that - We have a little nook between our kitchen/dining and living area where the washing machine is, and for the past few years we’ve had a plastic chair sitting there. This was the “time-out” area for when my kids misbehaved. It’s out-of-the-way enough that they would feel appropriately excluded, but they could still hear the rest of the family out in the main area so they’d be motivated to get his act together so they could come back and join us. They don’t need timeouts anymore, but that chair is still there. Over the past year, my two teenage stepdaughters and I have been sitting in that chair while crying, because it’s a good spot to hide, it’s out of everyone’s line of sight but it’s not completely isolated. So now it’s become the cry chair.

Anyway my daughter led me to the cry chair. I thought she would stay with me but as soon as I sat down, she turned around and skipped back to the living area. I sat there and wept for about 2 minutes, letting tears run down my cheeks unchecked, wiping my nose occasionally with a tissue, sobbed intermittently a couple of times but not much. I blew my nose gently and looked in the mirror, there was a tear trail straight down the front of my neck soaking into my t-shirt. two tear streaks on my left cheek, one down the middle and one on the outer side. Two streaks on my right cheek, one down the middle and one on the outer side, and a half streak on the inner corner where a tear had fallen off. I wiped my face and went back to finish plating dinner.