Lately, I have been listening to a Vintage Halloween playlist on YouTube to get all those ~*nostalgic feels*~ while mainlining my light therapy lamp directly into my sexy little retinas. A core tenet of my personality is romanticizing this time of year, which gets to be a bit of a challenge when my Original Recipe Depression slips into its snow bunny couture and becomes Seasonal Affective Depression. Even still, I have always identified as an Autumn Boy™ and never a Fall one. Gregg, I hear you say, aren’t those exactly the same thing? And though I would never disagree with someone as gorgeous as you, I regret to inform you that the two terms are drastically and life-alteringly separate phenomena.
For me, Autumn is a warm Bourbon and Sweet Potato pie with a flaky homemade crust, and Fall is a Pumpkin Spice Poptart. Autumn is the town square in Stars Hollow, but Fall is ragweed and a lumpy infinity scarf tucked into a jewel-toned peacoat from Old Navy. Autumn is apple picking with a lover and then writing a poem about it in an artisanal coffee shop, whereas Fall is reheating the same sad bowl of corn chowder all week, every week, just to feel something again.
Regrettably, I’ve been having a Fall, and not the more aspirational Autumn.
The only thing that can seem to get me through this season is throwing my full weight (110lbs soaking wet) into escapist nostalgia. We’re talking near-lethal doses of Charlie Brown specials here. Is watching the holiday episode of That’s So Raven a maladaptive regressive behavior, or is it the healthiest habit I’ve got left at this point? Will my seventh rewatch of My Big Fat Greek Wedding finally fix me?
Just once, I want to know the same joy I used to feel the week before school vacation. Back when I still knew how to do long division (or any division for that matter) and just the idea of an AV cart rolling in for a movie day was stronger than any Lexapro prescription. I miss being zipped into a puffy LLBean jacket to go caroling in a 99-cent Santa hat. I miss my teacher helping us to make hand turkeys, and when Jell-o Jigglers were appropriate for every conceivable occasion. I miss the pageantry and the construction paper, I miss my tiny uncomfortable Holiday formal wear from Sears and the wonder I felt gazing at a lawn littered with licensed inflatables. But mostly I just miss being able to look forward to things.
Now the most pleasurable thing I can expect to experience in a day isn’t good sex, or food, or even a full night’s sleep— it’s sticking a Q-tip in as far as it will go and cleaning out my dirty little pig ears. And I think that that is good and great, and quite frankly, brave. The rest of those things (save Q-tip-pegging myself) simply do not hit the same anymore. They will never be as strong as my favorite drug— nostalgia.
During my latest depressive episode, I found myself facedown on my Ikea couch unable to move, in a position I’ve affectionately named, “the laziest bottom in Boston.” It was only 3:30 PM, so naturally, it was the darkest day on record and had been so since roughly noon. I felt like Sandra Bullock just sorta floating from space station to space station in Gravity. Traveling in that inky blackness so long I actually forgot the last time I saw the sun. The man I was texting, let's call him George Clooney for metaphorical consistency, was trying to make plans to come over and fuck me. He continued to ask me for nudes though I have rarely felt less sexy in my entire life.
(The least sexy I think I have ever felt was the time I thought a man was grinding on me at a club, but it turned out he had just mistaken me for the wall. After realizing I was in fact, a sweaty human boy, he promptly left to another corner of the dancefloor.)
Still, I wriggled like I was stuck in a sleeping bag and got my depression sweatpants down around my ankles to take his picture.
It wasn’t a good picture— and I know how to take a good picture of my ass. Give me enough time, the right lighting crew, a bottle of Nair, some know-how, and a stylist and I will get you an ass picture that could make anyone say, “Woah, that’s definitely a human ass.” This was not one of those days, and as I looked back at my sad handiwork, I realized I simply did not care. Caring— that’s a full-time job. Autumn Gregg cares, Fall Gregg can hardly remember to take out the trash or how long that evil moldy container of yogurt has been in his fridge. Still, I sent the picture and though I knew George Clooney wanted fapathy, all I could muster was apathy.
I wasn’t always like this. I used to have passions and interests and the energy to pursue them both. But as I age, I find the things that used to, in the words of Marie Condo, spark joy are shrinkingly effective. The highlight of my year used to be the few times my family would get a two-liter bottle of store brand Ginger Ale for us all to split. Now I can get a Schweppes whenever I want, and try as I might, I can’t feel that same excitement. Buying things, I think, will give me the momentary high I crave, but even that fizzles out and dies before my collector’s edition Rosie O’Donnell doll even has the chance to arrive from eBay. Last week I spent $80 on a gourmet cheese board and felt nothing.
I just can’t get hard for life anymore. Does BlueChew have a pill for that?
I think nostalgia comes from a truly sad place— from the displeasure with one’s current circumstances. That is probably why we regress to these nostalgic hallmarks in times of deep unrest and unease. Things were so much easier when we were younger, and now all we have are coffee-stained teeth and an electric bill we can’t figure out how to pay. When you can’t see much of a future, it stands to reason that you’ll try to escape to the past. When you can’t find that same spark for life in the things you do as an adult, you will reasonably look back to when that spark was a bit more abundant. But, nostalgia is a bit like Tiny Tim’s little wooden wishbone crutch. It’s taped together and may work in the moment, but given a little pressure, it too will break. We’d have to be kidding ourselves to view this as a fix with any real permanency.
I’d like to take a nostalgia detox, to wane myself off of the stuff altogether and reinstate a little enthusiasm in my own life. I know in my heart that I can one day feel the same level of bliss as Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski at the Mama Mia wrap party. I know that capacity for joy is in me, I used to feel it whenever My Big Fat Greek Wedding would play on TBS. The answer certainly isn’t slipping comfortably into My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, or some other pale imitation of my childhood that hopes to jumpstart my dopamine receptors. The answer is finding something new that can take that place, which is exhausting and challenging but ultimately so worth it. Until then at least I’ve got my Q-tips.