Midsummer blues

I don't know why I haven't blogged about this before, at this point it seems a somewhat uncurrent affair. Anyway, I'll take my chances, although we've already reached what is almost mid-July.

Norway, as you know, is blessed with long, light summer nights. Already in the very beginning of March, it is pretty light pretty late and pretty early, and this goes on well into August. Still, this never fails: Each year, around the 22nd of June, I am suddenly hit by a wave of depression. Actually, I don't want to offend those who are really diagnosed with depression, which I am not, so let's modify it to struck by a sudden feeling of sadness. Why am I sad when the summer is at its highest and the days at their longest? Because this is it, of course. This is as good as it gets. This is when the sun turns, and, although slowly, the days start getting shorter and shorter, until there is hardly any daylight left. And so I have my midsummer blues. And to tell you the truth, I don't really lose that feeling until we are approaching Christmas, and the whole process once again is reversed. From then on things only get better.

When I am writing this, I realize what a complex person I really am. You see, the thing is that I kind of prefer the dark. The endless summer nights are stressful. I mean: Vi skal ikkje sova burt sumarnatta and all that. You can't go to bed when it's light, the kids definitely don't want to go to sleep, and when you (for some reason) wake up at 5 or 6 or some other ungodly time, it's so light outside that you can't seem to go back to sleep again.

So why do I get my midsummer blues when the sun turns? I don't know, but I do.