Lane B., UT

I live in Utah's Salt Lake Valley and have always struggled in the summer and winter.

As a child I would always seem to catch a cold at the beginning of winter and then remain congested for the rest of the season. I never quite felt happy during that time and was prone to anxiety for which I could never quite pinpoint the reason. In summer I would suffer from terrible depression and feel like I couldn't quite catch my breath. I thought it was just allergies or overheating, or maybe something to do with the sunlight; some kind of seasonal depression perhaps. 

Every year it was the same and I was forever blaming my breakdowns on incidental things in my life at the time.It wasn't until I was in my mid-20s that I began to notice that my seasonal despair and panic didn't always start at the same time; but it always fired up as soon as the rain / snow stopped and the valley was filled with smog. I realized as well that other members of my family suffered the same thing at exactly the same times. It wasn't some bizarre quirk of my biology or brain chemistry; I couldn't breathe.

My sinuses and lungs are inflamed by particulates, wildfire smoke from the West Coast, and ozone. The valley traps it all like a big bowl and it just continues to gather until storms blow through. The longer between storms, the worse I feel. I struggle to focus, don't sleep well, am always sore, always feel fatigued, and my outlook on life becomes darker over time. All that just from bad air. 

In spring and fall I find myself feeling positive. I feel healthy. Life is full of possibilities. I love where I live and never want to leave. I'm happy. But in summer and winter, I can't stop thinking about how to move away from here as soon as possible. 

I've tried a number of things to find some relief. Antidepressants, allergy medication, decongestants, an inhaler, home air filtration, dust masks. I've tried and continue to try a number of supplements that are supposed to help with respiratory health and inflammation. But none of it makes it truly tolerable. It takes some of the edge off, but it's still brutal. Every. Single. Time. Because while I am trying to mitigate the symptoms, I can't really solve the problem. 

I don't know what I'll do. I seem to be getting more vulnerable to it as I age. I've talk to a number of people struggling with the same thing. I spoke to the cashier at my local pharmacy who was gasping from the ozone; she had COPD despite having never smoked and her doctor advised her to move away as soon as possible or she would likely die an early death. I haven't seen her at work since then. I hope she's okay.

I hope eventually my new small business will give me the means to move somewhere else but it's probably not happening any time soon. In the meantime all I can do is talk about it and cherish the days when the air is clean enough to feel like I'm not slowly suffocating. I hope some progress gets made soon but I don't even know how that might happen. This is always been home for me and I'd like to stay. But eventually, like the cashier, I may have to go in order to save myself from a slow and painful death.

We'll see.