We all have cause to be blue, but we can fight it
Q: I woke up today with a heavy soul. I felt so blue like I’ve been wounded inside, and so low. I started crying and didn’t even know why.
Yet I do know that my immediate family’s fortunate. We are all healthy and isolating as directed and we are fine with each other’s company. I know I should be grateful and strong. But I just felt leaden.
Any suggestions?
Monday Morning Blues
A: Start with light. When you’re blue, turn on the ones where you’re sitting/ working right away.
If the sun’s shining, get outside (while staying distanced).
Repeat the above as much as you can. Meanwhile, your “blues” may also be about seasonal affective disorder (SAD), not only the pandemic.
People with SAD experience mood changes and symptoms similar to depression.
The symptoms usually occur during the fall/winter months when there’s less sunlight and usually improve with the arrival of spring.
Meanwhile, the daily reports of COVID-19 infection cases and deaths are naturally worrisome, as are lockdowns’ restrictions on daily life, and the time it’ll take until enough people have been vaccinated.
There are also the demands of homeschooling of any children you may have, and you’re limited to virtual contact with friends and extended family, which affects everyone in your home bubble.
Yet being “fortunate” calls on you to not only continue doing everything which you and your loved ones are getting right, but to boost your spirits with gratitude that you have jobs, can afford food, and feel healthy.
Use music, exercise, family games, and laughter as your mood-lifting tools.
If more is needed, talk online to a therapist.
Q: How does a lonely widower (15 years now) find a lost love from his past? I know she had feelings for me in the early 1950s and I also cared for her, but it never came to be, as I was already engaged to another.
I also know that she was an only child and she lived with her mother after her father passed away. And later, she apparently got married sometime in the mid-1970s.
This all took place in my home city. I reached out to see if I could find my lost love and if she might be alone now too.
But after months of trying all possibilities I had no success. She may well be deceased, as she’d be about 84-85 by now.
I’d hate to think, however, that we might both now be alone and not able to make contact with each other again.
I thought that perhaps you might, with the resources of the newspaper, locate her and allow her the option of whether she would be interested in communicating. I’d be more than happy to share all the details I know. Hopeful at 88
A: You paint a lovely romantic dream scenario, but one which you’ll have to pursue on your own. It may be possible through an online search using her name and birthplace, or by hiring an agency that does the search for you.
Fulfilling this dream would certainly be worth an investment of time and a reasonable cost.
This column is to help readers, anonymously, with their relationship issues, but not with matters that invade others’ privacy without their permission.
Still, I admire your long-standing affectionate memories of someone so far in your past.
I also respect your integrity for not breaking your engagement to another (presumably your late wife) when you met and cared for this other woman.
Ellie’s tip of the day
If light/sunshine/exercise don’t lessen your pandemic blues, mental-health therapy may be helpful.