The Selkie Dances in the Sun

I have Seasonal Affective Disorder. A bipolarity that waxes and wanes with the length of days and the glow of the sun.

Right now, I am high.

The sun is brilliant, it resists bedtime, it shivers with consciousness of its beauty and power. We are telepathic, the sun and I, we are sisters, wrenched from each other at birth. I sense her nearness, I know her joy, I drink her power, and make it my own.

The sun feeds the selkie in me. I’ve left behind the dark depths of the sea. I exhibit myself on a large flat rock, drinking in my sister’s kisses, feeding on her unlimited strength. My body smiles and warms, shedding the seal and returning to happy human form. I leave my seal cocoon behind, step out onto the shore, and dance naked before the world.

The sun feeds the selkie in me. The selkie who cleans and gardens and loves. The selkie who craves the sweet servitude of domesticity. The selkie who cooks and vacuums and loves.

Week by week I whittle away at the embarrassing doses of chemicals that keep me awake and thinking during the edited days of winter. The fever is upon me. I embark on projects of which I can only dream the rest of the year, praying to the sun goddess that this year, for once, I will get them all done before the dark enchantment returns.

It is spring.
I am high.
I am in love.

The seasons will change, their path is set. My mood will settle, will slide, will struggle, with only a dam of drugs to keep it from falling off the cliff into destruction below.

And the love? That word still makes me self-conscious and nervous, as if I’m not really allowed to say it. It is an unlikely tree to be growing by the shore of the sea. Its seasons are its own. Bursts of young green shoots and flowers of unworldly hue do-si-do with the triumphant shouts of leaves of crimson and gold that never fall, but merely morph back into green at some signal unheard by the rest of the world. Arising from a seed accidentally dropped, its growth rapid and stubborn, its color may change but its roots are firm. There is no storm that can blow it down, and it stands as a beacon shining out to sea.

I am your selkie.
I am the sun.
I shine with delight.
It’s time you came home.