"just keep swimming" - dory

Seasonal affective disorder, or some may call it winter depression, is no laughing matter alright. I swear I have all the symptoms written on my forehead, increased appetite with weight gain, increased sleep time and daylight sleepiness, can't concentrate in the afternoon, loss of interest in other activities, social withdrawal and even irritability. Being easily irritated is a women's privilege, they have all the hormones and such, truly acceptable, but for a guy, don't think it fits. Call me hypochondriac and I'll smack you in the face, I'm truly depressed hack yeah.

What I did to justify my blue funk? what else, blame the winter, blame the cold weather, blame the Egyptians for honking in the streets, blame the construction worker who started to hammer my wall early in the morning, blame the microbs for infecting my nose and throat, blame my hermit crabs for dying, blame the pain, the never ending pain, blame my pampiniform plexus for dilating, blame the valve dysfunction, blame global warming, blame deforestation, blame social stigma, I even condemn the poor ammu who shouts for recyclable junks to feed his children at home for disturbing my depressed afternoon nap.   

I bury myself with the delusion of finishing something important, a quest in the world of fantasy by reading novels and putting myself in the shoes of Robb Stark and Frodo Baggins. I dread adventures, a journey of wonders, magical swords, elves, unicorns and dragons. I bury myself deep in the sand, just like how the hermit crabs did before they die.

But I realize soon enough that I could still breathe the fresh air. Exaggerating my depression and blaming the whole wide world is the easiest way for me to escape the fact that I myself is the one to be blamed. 

Photo taken last month near Wadi Rayyan, El Fayoum.

Using pain as an excuse for everything is lame. People live in pain all the time, even worse than mine. It's time to move on, and accept it as apart of me. What else can I do. You know when we learn about the five steps of grief during psych class; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. I do believe I'm at the last stage now, acceptance. 

From something bad, comes good. I do believe that my small challenge from Allah gave me a better understanding in medicine as a whole. How a simple disease could effect a life, emotionally, physically. Even my surgeon said that once we open up our body with an incision of a scalpel, we disturb the serenity of our inner body and affects our normal physiology. Sometime it is needed to prevent worse condition, it cures, and it even kills. Even if everything goes fine after that, it still leaves a scar, a memory.  

Bushes growing in the middle of the desert near the Wadi Rayyan oasis.

It's time to pull myself back together, be the person who I was before. Realizing that throughout the dark times, there is still people around me who gave endless support, care and love was a wake up call. You know when a monkey is sick, they tend to withdraw from their tribe, that was what I did to my close friends, and I regret it, I shouldn't have. It's time to fix everything up, get my club up and running again, enough of hiding from responsibilities, be a human, with feelings and all. 

Take one step at a time though. Couldn't run 3km in 15 minutes now or Ill end up bedridden for two days. Ill gain weight for sure, and this time it wont be muscles. Oh dear future wife, will I still be cute if I got chubby?

#selamatberamal!