Longest day is well behind you, meteorological autumn too and now the equinox has arrived and gone. Someone at work has already cracked the gag about how many shopping days to Christmas and what you felt was the long dark days rushing towards you.
Those few words threw you back to last year and it felt too real. Sooner than you care to think the clocks will go back and then there is no pretending, that season has arrived.
You remember where the lightbox and its case went in the spring and mentally think about how much the vitamin D might have gone up since then. The blackout blinds have worked all summer and the walking felt good.
It helped but it's not the cure.
You remember a GP conversation that was pretty close to maybe next year we can try a short course of antidepressants, from October until March. That didn't sound short then and it doesn't now. It might work, then again it might not.
As that thought drifts you feel the scales tipping away, this summer's balance gone.
The reminders flood forward, the hours spent wide awake, when you desperately wanted to sleep, the weekend mornings gone with attempts to catch up, to recharge. The too frequent feeling that a nap around 3 pm would be great but what do you tell your boss.
It can't be because it helps with my mood, it helps bring back a little balance. How do you say that out loud?
The last reminder arrives, plain as a blue-sky day, this is who I am, that summer person is gone. You might as well hang up a sign saying waiting for Spring and dreading Winter.
Because that's how it feels right now.
It looks and feels a long way back but there's something in here too that asks for some attention. Why am I one and then the other? Aren't they both simply, me?
If that's true then there's something new to explore, not the conversations with mum about how to cope, not the hours spent talking about the what's-the-point-of-it-all with friends, the jokes with colleagues about being on sabbatical until Easter.
There's a conversation that's more direct, possibly more honest than before. If this is who I am, will fighting a losing battle make a difference? Is there another way?
Perhaps this is the season to find out.