i

January is almost over and I’m still processing 2023 — how about you? It wasn’t a “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” kind of year — well, if you live in Gaza and the Sudan, yeah, it was definitely the worst of times. For us privileged First World Whiners, really, it seems shameful to whimper that it was a hard year. But it kinda was. Maybe not hard. But draining. Was it not? I think I have a hard time with coming to terms with its essence because it was so full of good moments, not just short ones, but amazing days and weeks, peak experiences even.

And yet, I arrived at its end exhausted and mildly dissatisfied.

Therein’s the rub — exhausted and satisfied is a grand place to be. Exhausted and meh — meh. Not an awful, “I’d rather be dead” feeling.

But not a great feeling. You catching what I’m throwing?

(It’s not a snowball.)

So. I’m going to do what I always do when I can’t make sense of the past: Decide root causes don’t matter, put it in a box, duct tape it, and try to be less exhausted and more satisfied in 2024.

ii

January is almost over, so it’s staying light until almost the evening — well, until 6 p.m., which is at least late afternoon and, actually, at the equator, this is when the sun sets year round, so why am I complaining, also, the only stuff falling from my sky is snow and rain, why am I complaining — but it’s still so dark when I wake up — so that’s why I’m complaining.

The dark is hard.

Two more months, six weeks, really, and I can pretend spring is around the corner — the sun will be back. I want a life in which I’m not in the Northern-Northern Hemisphere November to February. Canadian and American snowbirds ruin every Mexican city they invade — I hate them, I want to be one of them.

iii

Snow can be beautiful. The cold, less so. The dark, never, not in the winter, not for me. The dark takes away the will to live.

You want to make plans to get me out of my blues — I offer a date in March. You say, but I haven’t seen you since October. I haven’t seen me since October either. I am still, asleep, hibernating. I will wake up in March.

My challenge with 2023 — I don’t think I ever woke up. I slept through spring-summer-fall and I’m not sure I have enough reserves for a second winter.

iv

I am not unhappy or depressed. Let’s be clear here before you start planning an intervention or prescribing mindfulness and CBT therapy. I’m just cold. And sleepy. Because it’s dark. No, I can’t take any more Vitamin D. Yes, I can probably turn on a few more lights — no, I can’t, we just got a government alert telling us to stop using so much electricity because the polar vortex is threatening to overload our power grid, tell me again why winter is fun?

v

I light a lot of candles and my happy blue light. I google “is it possible to overdose on Vitamin D” (Yes, but how you could swallow that many pills in a day, I’m not sure, and you have to keep on doing it for months, so I’m ok). I turn down another invitation for a tete-a-tete but I make plans to dance in the dark with everyone I know. I will try very hard to show up

The dark is hard.

Six weeks, two months, soon.

I’ll see you in March.

xoxo

“Jane”