I spent the first thirteen years of my life living in a place with summers so hot that people actually died from the heat. I spent the next nine years living in a place where the winters were so cold that people froze to death. So, for me, the climate in Prince George, where I live now, is temperate.

 

Like many people with mood disorders, I am strongly affected by the weather and changes of season. For years after my bipolar symptoms had made their presence known, my moods would travel up and down with the seasons. Decembers were spent in the hospital in deep depressions, while April/May usually caught my attention with a long mixed episode or, if I was lucky, a beautiful, euphoric hypomania.

 

Growing up in Southern Ontario, the heat didn’t seem to bother me nearly as much as it does now. I dutifully learned the phrase, “It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity,” as I would play in the shade, accepting without comment air that was heavy and moist. As I’ve grown older, and since a side effect from one medication I take is extreme sweating, I know I couldn’t live in such a hot climate again. The heat makes me cranky and lethargic now.

 

My next stop in life was Fort Nelson, a small town physically close to the Yukon Territory border. Before you go there, they tell that it gets cold. As a veteran of Southern Ontario winters, with their dampness, slush, and winds, I thought I knew cold. The cold in Fort Nelson, however, went beyond anything I had been prepared for. Temperatures would dip to –40°C or below. It was a cold that began working at freezing my skin as soon as I felt that icy air closing in on me. My saving grace was the grand, cloudless blue skies that accompanied the winter. As I became accustomed to the cold, anything above –20°C felt absolutely balmy, and I would go for walks, enjoying that beautiful sun-filled sky. The Fort Nelson summers were still sunny and much milder than I was used to, but the huge mosquitoes—birds, really!—kept most people inside, including me. I think it was that endless sun that helped control my depression enough that I could continue in ignorance of it.

 

The warmer winters of Mackenzie, about 180km north of Prince George, were a relief when I moved there. I wasn’t bothered by the enormous amounts of snow that fell constantly from October to March, and with the winter’s milder temperatures and the summers that were comparatively bug-free, it was easy to get out and walk, bike, or take my son to the park. Mackenzie’s geographic location, however, meant that the skies were filled completely with gray clouds more often than not. It was here that my slowly-emerging depression finally roared to life, and I hit rock bottom. Erratic behaviours, moods swinging between extremes, and disorganized thinking, characterized my daily life. I don’t blame the weather—I tend to think of my bipolar disorder as a live bomb that had been lying in wait for that one, small push of the detonator—but that endless, bland gray certainly did nothing to help my mood.

 

I’ve lived in Prince George for the last four years. For me, the winters are mild and have enough sunshine to help keep my moods even. When it’s too gray for too long, I use a full-spectrum light designed for the treatment of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). The springs here are longer and more pronounced, so those difficult mixed episodes aren’t as much of a problem. Those nice, “white” hypomanias are gone, too, but that’s okay; I always crashed when they were over. While the summers are a bit too hot for me at times, I know that I can still get out and walk or bike before the sun is too high in the sky. Ultimately, I think the climate in Prince George works for me because there aren’t long stretches of weeks or months with the same weather.

 

After years of learning about my illness, I realize now that there are ways I could have worked with the climates of any of the places where I have lived. For days that are too hot or too cold for walking outside, swimming or walking on a treadmill would have helped. SAD lights could have helped me through those endless gray days and made the transition to spring and summer smoother, without such strong and disastrous changes in mood.

 

Ultimately, while the ideal climate for each person with a mood disorder might exist on paper, it certainly doesn’t exist anywhere on our beautiful planet. Since I can’t change the weather, I have had to change myself. By having a plan of action ready for different seasons and weather, I have made a start to minimize their impact on me, and, hopefully, I will find that better mood.

 

Pennie-Lynn Davidson