I say I loathe the winter.
I lament various whispers underneath my breath about the icy conditions of both the roads and my being as I freeze and grow accustomed to winter.
I send complaints to friends about how I was made to thrive underneath a golden sun. Engineered to wear tank tops and flowy skirts, not jeans and puffer jackets. As the sun rises and falls much too late and much too soon each day, I fall into the same old patterns.
My light and energy flicker with the sky past 5 p.m., and all of a sudden, it becomes so very difficult to climb out of my warm sheets with the dim glow of the lamp next to me. I sleep from 6 to 7 p.m. and reawaken from my short slumber to do homework. Sleep, eat, homework, repeat.
I burn candles in my favorite scent, Candied Apple, and make the same tired complaints about how Christmas doesn’t hold the same magic it once used to. My patience for flurries of snowfall is long gone by January, and my longing for summer has returned.
Winter is too fast and too slow. It is too cold outside and too warm inside. It is too close to the end of the first semester and far too close to the start of another.
Winter is too much of everything.
I hate brushing snow off my car on an exhausting 7 a.m. school morning. My bangs awkwardly flitter in the wind and freeze in their position through the cold. I lose my balance on the ice and mutter something about the road conditions. I find the short days stretch on much, much longer than their summer counterparts. I wake up at 6:30 to trek out in the snow and sit in my heatless car.
But I suppose winter has its ups as well.
I love looking out my window at snowflakes falling, wondering how many can collect upon my eyelashes, their unique patterns melting against my skin. I throw a poorly constructed snowball that disintegrates as I offer up a pitiful toss. I stir a candy cane into my hot cocoa for flavor and watch my favorite Christmas movie. I come in from the cold, and a familiar warm wave of comfort washes over me. I blast Christmas music in my car, and if I look off into the distance at just the right moment, it’s like my childhood Christmases have returned to welcome me in their warm embrace.
In the midst of the world turning at both the speed of light and crawling along across the varying pace of my life, I try and freeze. I become like the statues I see in the park, the snowman on my front lawn. I look at everything and nothing, and I capture a glimpse of a moment I’ll reminisce on in not even a year.
I will long for the embrace of a warm summer and lament over my misgivings for winter. Staying shielded from the blizzard also means you miss out on the beauty of seeing the snowflakes that pass you.
