"It feels like I fell off a bike and am being dragged alongside it." A colleague recently shared this sentiment with me during a moment of vulnerable commiseration. The description honestly couldn't have been more apt. In fact, their words helped me realize the depth of my discontent. February seems the perfect time for genuine reflection. After stemming the overflow of spending and reducing the dangerously high levels of a sugar-induced holiday haze, the auspiciousness we accorded to a shiny new year dissipates and winter suddenly gets serious. Those late December dreams — of a healthier, meditative, more-productive and grounded life — give way to a melancholic malaise that accompanies deep winter's abrasion. This, this is the veritable winter — not the cozy kind where we welcome the transition from blazing summer into the solemnity of a crisp autumn that gently yields quiet wonderment during that first fallen snow. No, this is the pernicious, persistent season of perceived, perpetual gray.
And as my colleague implied, 2022 has already been acting a little extra.
Perhaps it's the weather — the frigid air's endless assault on my already-dry skin and the unyielding slickness of permeating ice. Maybe it's the inevitable grief of mounting losses assured with advancing age — of innocence, of any semblance of certainty, of a once-robust family. The coarse transition could be attributable to COVID — the drag of this benign annoyance for many but deadly experience for some, a Russian roulette virus that creates vastly different co-existent realities. Conceivably, it's the dismaying state of our Nation — the devolving of a democracy that is not upholding its stated ideals to promote the general welfare of all. Possibly, it's intuition — a gnawing notion that humans cannot keep pace with the curated worlds we've managed to manufacture.
It's likely exhaustion. Juggling those jarring possibilities in juxtaposition is kind of a bummer. But if writing's purpose is to surface what's pressing, these concessions are all I have to offer.
This is a lament. A sincere acknowledgement. An outward expression of an internal state of mild depression brought on by a combination of circumstantial biological and environmental compression.
Though, I admit I am lucky, as I happen to possess a brain chemistry that allows admirable points of light to penetrate, like the first day of sunshine after a month of foggy mist. A new work of signed fiction by a favorite author to savor. An afterglow arising after a rhythmic, sweaty Kizomba dance lesson. A sing-along session in a car ride to Elton John's "Sad Songs (Say So Much)." This season exacts most of my energy for sustaining bright spots such as these, joy — more exception than general rule.
I miss the awe inspired by uncertainty rather than its alter-ego — anxiety.
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I am sad.
I miss the sun — the feel of it on my skin and the smell of it baking on tree bark. I miss long days, full of light and its harbinger. I miss putting my foot down securely, making contact with a ground that won't betray me. I miss the promise, the prelude, the precursor of a dawn on the horizon. I miss the warmth, the wit and the wisdom of a beautiful mother and grandmothers, as I dangle from the last branch of my immediate family tree. I miss the stories that get taken by death, so little do I know of grandfathers, uncles or ancestors I never met. I miss the presence of those people I let slip through my fingers in anger, in lethargy, in fear or misguided pride. I miss seeing whole faces and hugging without halting. I miss idealistic, positive, cooperative political will. I miss the attempt at being "all in" something together. I miss the communal desire of taking care. I miss aiming for alignment between action and the words of rules we've enshrined as golden. I miss fewer layers of both the meta and physical kind. I miss the awe inspired by uncertainty rather than its alter-ego — anxiety.
I am sad. But not without reason. I'm struggling against a self and a society that would have me paint over this season of discontent with more positive perspective. I've learned that glossing over losses does not heal, it only represses what's sure to resurface (probably at the least opportunistic time). Both forces of nature and nurture have contributed to this sorrow. Some circumstances are immutable — like weather — but others are simply waiting to be mended. That's why mourning is important. In the sharing and shedding of pain, we connect, enabling us to feel seen. Keeping our hands busy — planting the seeds of release instead of holding so tightly to hurts we've internalized as only our own — is what makes the promise of spring possible. ♦
Inga N. Laurent is a local legal educator and a Fulbright scholar. She is deeply curious about the world and its constructs and delights in uncovering common points of connection that unite our shared but unique human experiences.
