I know why I'm depressed today. Seasonal Affective Disorder  (SAD) starts when the days get shorter and there's less sunshine. Last year, when I bemoaned SAD to my email friends, a long-time girl-pal suggested I take Vitamin D.

I've been taking it since then and have discovered there's a lot of research on the benefits of Vitamin D. However, the gloomy days this week have not been alleviated by the extra amounts of D I've consumed. SAD is having it's way with me and I am not enjoying the ride.

I've heard it said that many people get depressed during the holidays because they expect to be happy during this time of the year and if they're not - and most people who are clinically depressed aren't able to muster up 'good cheer' on cue - they feel even more depressed than usual.

The suicide rate used to go up every year around Christmas and I guess it still does. I haven't kept track the past few years. SAD doesn't make you suicidal, just sick. I used to get deathly sick with the flu or bronchitis at the end of winter every year until about ten years ago.

Now, I just get weepy and achy all over. Any stress at all sends me crying into my sweet tea (I don't drink beer). It doesn't have to be much. My computer being extra slow, getting beaten mercilessly playing chess on my new iPhone...anything and everything.

Technically, I have clinical depression, but I think I conquered it when I stopped taking the drugs prescribed by my physician. Now, the only time I feel depressed is when I don't get enough sunshine during the winter months.

SAD overcame me early this year. Last year, I didn't feel it until after the holidays. The only other time I've had depression unrelated to  SAD in recent years was on 2-02-2002. Too many twos numerologically speaking.

That depression I never want to have again. I was in a theatre group and a rehearsal was scheduled for that day. I called in sick and sat on my sofa all day trying to climb out of a dark hole that seemed to  get deeper and deeper and darker and darker until I couldn't see, hear, or feel.

I confess, I cheated to overcome the clinical depression. When I stopped taking the pills - first, Prozac, then Zoloft - I called on the name of Jesus every time I felt depression coming on and it worked! There really is power in the name.

However, on 2-02=2002, I couldn't remember my name, let alone Jesus'. All I could do was wait for the dark cloud that had replaced my mind to drift away so I could re-claim my sanity and my ability to talk, walk, or even imagine doing those things.

I always wondered what those words in Genesis, "the earth was without form and void," meant. I found out that day.  My mind had no form and   was completely void for a whole day. I think I know what catatonia feels like now.

Whatever it was, I NEVER want to go to that place again. As much as I hate pharmaceuticals, I'll take every pill on the shelf rather than have that feeling of being totally out of touch with myself.

I've had that feeling only one other time. A friend of mind had a brother who was schizophrenic and his mental illness was so severe, he was instiuttionalized and told everyone he was possessed by demons.

My friend and I went to grad school together and were teaching in Wichita when his  brother came for a visit shortly before he succumbed to his demons and died. We'd planned to  go to a lecture and his brother went with us.

The mentally ill man kept moving over next to me and I kept moving away from him becuase every time he stood next to me, I felt as if I was is that same hole I later fell into 2-02-2002. It was a horrible experience.

The next day, my friend said his brother told him that the reason he kept standing next to me was because that was the only time the demons were quiet. I knew I was a psychic empath, but that was the first time I absorbed someone's mental illness.

Previously, I'd felt other's emotions and even physical pain, but nothing ever like that. I can only surmise that once you absorb something that strong and powerful, those feelings never completely go away but remain tucked away in your subconscious just waiting to overtake you in a moment of weakness.

I'm not sure what triggered the reoccurrence 2-02-2002, but I really believe numbers are as powerful a force as stars and planets and that day was a day when I was vulnerable to psychic attack because the negative side of the number two - just ONE two - is depression.

I didn't experience it again on 2-20-2002, or 2-22-2002, so maybe it was about more than just the numbers. But just in case it was all those twos that took me down into the depths, I'll be ready with my garlic, cross, and anointing oil 2-02-2020.