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After the Sleep
Jan. 18th, 2022 09:46 amJanuary is a weird time time to try to wake up.
I feel like I've been dormant (other possible words: depressed, inactive, asleep, emotionally comatose) for at least two years, maybe 6. In November of 2016 I started folding up the tender, creative, wondrous parts of me to put into storage or hibernation or protective custody while the world outside got progressively colder and more dangerous. Maybe it was just that I began to see the cold and the danger, and they were always there. Whatever the case, my personal world got darker and I pricked my metaphorical finger on a metaphorical spindle and went to sleep.
Around my home, January is a time of long, dark nights and short, cold days. Bears are asleep, generally. Frogs are turned off, usually, with ice crystals stiff over their tiny bodies under leaves or logs, waiting for warmer weather. Fish are deep in the warmer regions of frozen-over lakes, twitching slightly. And we chose this time as a time of renewal, for some reason. If it were me (and it is me--I must remember that I have agency over the celebrations I choose), I would choose to bring my focus to renewal when the days begin to get longer again, the day after the winter solstice, or when the first pussy willows bud and the first daffodils and crocuses appear out of the snow. When the birds sing louder and louder and the rabbits start eating my raspberry canes.
But right now, slowly, maybe with the slow change of daylight, I find myself beginning to emerge just a little from the poisoned torpor that has held me for so long. I can feel that my emotional muscles have atrophied in the interim. I don't remember how to create or be freely vulnerable. I'm unpacking these boxes to find that the tender, creative, wondrous parts have withered in the dark. I need some kind of sustenance, but it's January, and nothing is really growing yet. There's still snow on the ground, and more in the air. The days are cold and short, and the nights are long and dark, and nourishment is difficult to find.
How can I feed my starving self, my mind and heart? I need something kind, something true, something sweet with the love of the world.
I feel like I've been dormant (other possible words: depressed, inactive, asleep, emotionally comatose) for at least two years, maybe 6. In November of 2016 I started folding up the tender, creative, wondrous parts of me to put into storage or hibernation or protective custody while the world outside got progressively colder and more dangerous. Maybe it was just that I began to see the cold and the danger, and they were always there. Whatever the case, my personal world got darker and I pricked my metaphorical finger on a metaphorical spindle and went to sleep.
Around my home, January is a time of long, dark nights and short, cold days. Bears are asleep, generally. Frogs are turned off, usually, with ice crystals stiff over their tiny bodies under leaves or logs, waiting for warmer weather. Fish are deep in the warmer regions of frozen-over lakes, twitching slightly. And we chose this time as a time of renewal, for some reason. If it were me (and it is me--I must remember that I have agency over the celebrations I choose), I would choose to bring my focus to renewal when the days begin to get longer again, the day after the winter solstice, or when the first pussy willows bud and the first daffodils and crocuses appear out of the snow. When the birds sing louder and louder and the rabbits start eating my raspberry canes.
But right now, slowly, maybe with the slow change of daylight, I find myself beginning to emerge just a little from the poisoned torpor that has held me for so long. I can feel that my emotional muscles have atrophied in the interim. I don't remember how to create or be freely vulnerable. I'm unpacking these boxes to find that the tender, creative, wondrous parts have withered in the dark. I need some kind of sustenance, but it's January, and nothing is really growing yet. There's still snow on the ground, and more in the air. The days are cold and short, and the nights are long and dark, and nourishment is difficult to find.
How can I feed my starving self, my mind and heart? I need something kind, something true, something sweet with the love of the world.
