winter is my worst nightmare

My mood during winter is genuinely terrible. I know “Winter Depression“ is a term thats been used so often its kind of a “normal“ thing but can we talk about how serious it actually is?

I started Uni during winter semester and I have a 1,5 commute to Uni. And safe to say I did not do ANYTHING. At all.

I missed about 5 exams and I failed two because I didnt show up. I was bed ridden for months and did the bare minimum to make people think everything was okay. I lied about my productivity, thought of showering as chore, didn‘t clean my room just put stuff aside to make it look clean, I did not go outside and slept 10 hours a day and continued to feel tired and fatigued matter what.

Now that the first rays of sunshine are back I‘m suddenly up at 8 am and ate breakfast (which I never did weeks ago, I was only hungry at like 4pm) and I opened up my laptop to go study.

Like I genuinely don‘t know how to cope with this. My country is cold and grey 2/3 of the year and I only ever function normally for that 1/3.

And worst of all: Winter Depression is rarely really seen as a real thing. Doctors tell me to just buy a UV lamp and force myself to eat nutritious meals. When I try to talk about it to people I get a “hahaha I’ve seen that on ig reels so often!! so real girl!“ Its exhausting, it makes me feel like the way I feel is not valid and that I‘m just overdramatic.