A SAD Little Lamp

So a little bit ago I pulled out this "daylight" lamp I've had sitting in the corner gathering dust.

I don't know when it really started to hit me, but, yeah, I do get pretty depressed over the winter. Seasonal Affective Disorder. It was two winters ago when I was thinking about killing myself, I was so depressed. Back then I didn't have a job or you or anything to get me out or occupy my thoughts. The psychiatrist I was seeing at the time, the one at school, upped my Wellbutrin intake, which helped me get out of the worst parts of it.

I mentioned the SAD to my parents one year and, in an effort to help me, they mailed me this "daylight lamp" last year. It came from Big Lots (it said so on the box), and I don't think it was over $30. (It had the price on the box too, but I tossed it and now forget the exact figure.) I remember I smashed my thumb trying to put it together. It's so cheaply made, this metal plate in part of the stand ripped apart its welds as I tried to screw it together so that it'd stand upright and not at some wonky angle.

My parents mean well, but I don't know if this lamp is the kind that'll help. Firstly, there was no mention anywhere about how many lux the lamp is. Lux is some kind of measurement of how bright the light is... most places tell you you need a lamp that produces 10,000 lux for SAD treatment. For comparison, most lightbulbs only produce a few hundred lux. I've done a lot of research over the past few years... if I'm going to spend over $100 on a friggin' lamp, I want one that'll friggin' work.) The other part that bugged me that that there was no mention of UV filtering. I want the lamp to cheer me up, not turn my eye sockets into smoking craters!

But I'm sitting here with this light on anyways, because I'm feeling lonely and sad and it's dark out already. I don't know if I'm any less depressed, but I can certainly see better.