Circadian, from the Latin, circ (light) and dias (death).

It is late summer and the sunlight is slowly dying in small increments each day.

For those of us with mental illness, light is a particularly important factor in good health. It not only gives us critical vitamins and melatonin, it also helps regulate mood.

Moods are a big thing with me. Even if they aren’t evident to the outside world, my moods affect me dramatically – they can be circadian-like in how they ebb and flow.

Like the tides. And this tide within me can be so difficult to chart.

Recently I thought I had found a perfect drug but in the end it gave up the ghost and left me even more depressed and discouraged.

And still I rise.

Still, we all fall down, in big ways and in small ways. We feel immobilized, defeated. We wait in the darkness, curled up on the rumpled couch, impatient to feel a flick of energy, to get a spark to the brain.

And it feels like ashes, all around.

I try not to globalize and to not dwell on the fact that this has been a chronic problem, in various ideations, since I was 12.

I try to believe that I have new skills, new drugs, new options, a new understanding of my illness.

All that is good.

But at the end of the day it is my husband’s touch on my back, his gentle reassurances whispered into my hair, over and over again, that I will get better.

And today, that is the medicine that I reach for. The medicine that works.

In truth, we all fall down. Some crash harder and for a substantial amount of time. Others touch down and rise quickly.

Lately I’m feeling a bit scorched.

And yet, this morning a small crack of sunshine made its way across the bedroom floor.

And as I shuffled down the stairs there was a crispness to the air that signals a new season. Golden leaves stir and drift lazily down to earth.

I feel better.

And tonight, watching tv, my husband will deliver the dose of reassurance that is half commiseration and half pep-talk.

He is the sane one. The witness to my endless dance around this posey-madness.

I will fall down and he will pick me up.

And somewhere between the rising and the falling I’ll get a chance to embrace him and tell him I am grateful.

Grateful to have him as my partner in this thing, this up and down and all around dizzy dance of love.