Cold Sunny Days

I haven't really 'advertised' this blog. Honestly, I haven't told anyone about it. I thought it would be good to just start posting and seeing what happens. Perhaps some people will find it online. Perhaps some of my friends will notice it while looking at my websites on my FB profile info. Perhaps.
I decided I would just throw my words into the world wide web and let them soak free and unnoticed for a while. Advertising depression isn't considered fashionable, trendy, or pretty.

Today while at a bookstore I saw a poem book about depression written by Susan Polis Schutz. I had always loved her poems and her greeting cards, and to find out that she had suffered from depression to the point of not being able to get up from bed for 3 months, and she even wrote a book with reflections and poems about it, man, she is my heroine now. Not because she suffered from depression - I admired her before that - but because even though she was deeply depressed she tried to do something with it, like poetry.

I've written poems throughout my life, since the age of 9. Most of them are in my native language, Brazilian Portuguese. I have written a dozen poems or so in English, as I became more fluent, probably in the past 10 years. I have a few poems published in Portuguese, and I had a poetry blog in Portuguese for 7 years. I haven't restarted my poetry blog, and I haven't really thought of publishing anything anytime soon, let alone in English! However, seeing Susan Polis Schutz' book about depression really encouraged me to keep posting my thoughts and my verses in this blog, even though I am still the only one visiting it!

So this is it

I'm turning thirty this following Monday.
I have one weekend left - just one weekend - of my 20's.
I feel melancholic and a bit depressed. Why?
Perhaps I should explain myself a bit better.

I've suffered from clinic depression since 2004. I say "clinic" because I don't mean I'm a little sad, or anxious. I need medication to function. I have been released from my drugs a couple of times - only to find out I could not stay without them.

I've been taking Effexor XR continuously for the past 4 years, and now my doctor and I decided I'm going to try to stop. We've already started decreasing my dose, and yes! I'm excited!
The reason I'm stopping my medication right now - at the dawn of my big 30's, is because my husband and I want to start trying to conceive. We have no idea how long it may take for me to get pregnant, so we thought it would be best to start asap.

OF COURSE stopping an anti-depressant has its lows. Effexor is a very tricky medication - it has strong withdrawal symptoms and cannot be stopped cold turkey. It needs to be reduced very slowly. I know it from experience for I've been released from Effexor before. This time, however, I am really hoping I do not have a relapse before the end of my pregnancy and breast-feeding period.

I was all excited about turning 30. I was even more excited about trying to conceive while being 30. I think it's a great time in my life (age-wise as well) to try to have a baby. P and I have been married for near 4 years; he's reaching his 40's pretty soon, and we've done a decent amount of traveling. Everything sounded great, until this week.

This week I've felt somewhat lost. Is it the lack of medication already having an effect? Is it the fact that I was born during Summer but here in America December is during Winter? Is it all this rainy gray sky? Am I feeling the weight of turning 30 already? Am I afraid?

I am not sure. I feel nostalgic. I miss my family. Of course I have my husband and my friends around, I know. Is it too much to want all the people I love to be around?
My roots are still so deep in Brazil. And yet, I've started to forget words and expressions in my native language. I remember them later, obviously. What I feel, however, is that English has become my primary language. I think in English. I talk to myself in English. I even dream in English now. Sometimes I'm talking to my mother on the phone and I want to tell her something that happened, and I forget how to say "spill", or "threat" in my own language!

I named this blog "Thirty Springs" because of a poem I wrote about my turning thirty. It is usual for Brazilians to refer to age as "Springs". "She has lived 15 Springs"; "he's completed 25 Springs". I like this way of talking about age. I've lived 30 distinct Springs in my life, and reminding myself that there is only one Spring per year makes me realize how valuable and incredible life is.

I just did not want to have to turn 30 during Winter. I was born on a hot Summer's day after all!