Depressing Day

I just read this. One of the little news blurbs I get in my browser homepage.

Depressing Day
If you're down in the dumps, don't blame yourself -- blame the calendar, according to an expert.

A British psychologist said Jan. 24 is the most depressing day of the year. Dr. Cliff Arnall has created a mathematical formula that takes into account the weather, holiday debt, time since Christmas and time since failing to make your New Year's resolutions.

Funny thing, huh? I mean funny strange, not funny ha-ha. Funny ha-ha are some of this guy's cultural assumptions. Hey Dr. Arnall, I made my New Year's resolutions, don't have a lot of debt, and I'm still not happy. I wonder why he left out the fallout from holiday family feuds/recollections of family trauma triggered by just seeing nasty old uncle what's his name's kids. Oh and then there's the whole "christmas came and went and it didn't make anything better. There was no christmas miracle and it is the end of January so I guess it isn't coming" feeling. There should be a word for that one. I think it's an emotionally relevant concept for most people in our culture, so it would be nice to be able to refer to it more easily. So anyhow, I suppose Dr. Arnall's proposal might not be 100% silly, although I contend the "mathematical formula"part is indisputably stupid.

Now Depressing Day for me personally is December 23. It's 3 months after my birthday, plenty of time to feel like this year was NOT going to be that much different than the last, that older didn't necessarily mean wiser or better. It is also 3 months into the school year, usually finding me failing my ass off in at least one class ("Do you see all these zeros?" asks the teacher, pointing to my name in the grade book. I squeak or nod or somehow indicate that indeed I do. "Those are the grades for your assignments," teacher sighs and closes book. I look at my shoes, his/her shoes, at the brightly colored shiny cardbord anthropomorphic numbers and mathematical operators under a "Math is fun! Meet The Decimals!" banner. My teacher asks "Couldn't you just turn in one or two so I don't have to give you a zero? You are such a bright blahblah potential blahblah smart blah" And I look at Mr. or Miss Teacher's sincere, concerned but disappointed face, thinking "I really want to turn in one or two assignments. I will still fail but at least s/he will love me again." Then I go home and end up re-reading three of my favorite fiction paperbacks over the weekend instead of doing the one or two make up homeworks my teacher just knows I can do.)

I found out years after December 23rd started overtly and consistently sucking for me that it was the day my grandmother's father died fighting a fire in Boston. That is kind of interesting, it's like a legacy I inherited or something.

But, I gotta say, January 24th is a big runner up for me. I figured that was because when I was 14, my sister was hospitalized right around then. When pressed, I blank on the exact date, but around January 24th it finds a way into my mind. The date alone is enough. Before I read this news blurb, I had just typed the date in an e-mail and thought something like "oh right, January twentything".

This time of year, I usually feel a little bit of hope because the light is returning. Cold blue light, but more light than we've had for too long. I think when you're an adolescent in the midst of some genuinely miserable shit, those small bits of hope can feel nearly simultaneously extremely beautiful and excruciatingly painful. Beautiful because the are so unlikely that they feel like blessings. Painful because of course they are short lived, adding to a growing sense that all joy and hope might be illusion.

I think it was a half day at school but I am not sure of that either. What I am sure of is that I was on my way home and anticipating hanging out with my sister. I was packed into the rattling stinking T bus. Salt and dirt constantly crunched between my unsensible 14 year old shoes and hard grooved rubber floor mats. I shifted through arbitrary pockets of overheated space and freezing blasts by the doors, no easier to tolerate or avoid despite being entirely predictable consequences of doors that could never fully close. Outside was cold blue daylight no longer a remnant by afternoon.

I felt hopeful and decided to stop at the 7-11 to pick up snacks for me and my sister. I don't remember specific plans, but I know I had a firm belief that she and I would be hanging out that day when I got home. I hadn't seen her at the T station after school, but I thought she'd be along eventually. I got home and went to the room we shared. Played music. Tried on different make up. Tried to coax the deck of tarot cards into providing me with a more definitive set of answers, explanations, and promises. Maybe I made a tape. I remember eventually watching the sunset out the window, leaning my elbows on the boombox and my forehead against the window. We had a great view out our bedroom window. Western, over the tops of other houses, clear over the Southeast Expressway. Boston was over there somewhere, which was a comfort to me in the murk of suburban January. I think I might have eaten all of what I bought at 7-11. I don't know for sure. What I know for sure is I remember feeling angry at being ditched, feeling like I had been stupid to think that day could be good. In that context, if my earlier hope had been realized as a hostess snack offering, then it makes sense that I might have eaten the snacks when I was steeped in denial of that hope. I think this because I remember feeling guilty, as if something I was doing signaled giving up hope on my sister. Go ahead and laugh, it is sort of funny in a very not funny way.

My sister came home very very late. It was dark, at best just one barely noticable shade lighter than dark. I was mad at her for leaving me waiting for her while my belief drained away while she forgot about me and took off to get fucked up with her friends...some of whom I felt were truly despicable people who were far far beneath us. Some were ok, like us, adolescents who were just trying to get through. Some were better than others. Michelle was a trusting stupid idiot and Mandy, well she was a different kind of idiot but the first to get pregnant and the last to stop. As I saw it, most of the people who swarmed along the edges of my sister's friends were older guys who I saw as of a limited kind: unspeakably stupid or maliciously wise-cracking, smelling unwashed or hosed down with buckets of Polo, and whose only discernable goals seemed to consist of getting head on a regular basis, keeping their cars running, and having enough money in their pockets to keep them and their child-brides in marlboros, Bud, and weed for the week. This is probably a harsh assessment, but this was my honest genuine impression of these men. This is why when I was allowed to hang out with the big kids back then, I did things like hit Mark in the head with a swing, repeatedly. Or try very very hard to trick these guys into showing how incredibly stupid they were. Most of the time, I had absolutely zero interest in hooking up with (in those days, "scooping on") any of them.

Since I had this very harsh view of the people she was spending her time with, I felt extra dumped when she didn't come home that afternoon.

Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one waiting that afternoon. My parents ambushed her. I'm not even sure she and I got to talk before they got her. The rest of that night was really horrible. To try to tell all the stories from the many perspectives would be hard. And to tell just mine would be so incomplete that it would be wrong, in the bad way and in the inaccurate way. I spent a large part of the night in my room after being threatened with arrest for screaming at cops in my kitchen.


But HEY, it's kind of reassuring to know that due to the wonders of silly math and cultural irrelativism, on this day, I am reassured that many people are sharing in this less than uplifting mood. Usually that sort of shared murk is only for special holidays, like Mother's day and Christmas.