When you think of sweating in winter, you often associate the sensation with the physical sense; attributed to the cliche New Year’s resolutions of joining the gym to lose the weight gained while feasting through, or attempting to just survive, the holiday season.
Or maybe, you’re lucky enough to live close to mountains (or large hills) with snow trails to play whatever winter activity your full heart desires. Viewing pictures of my younger sister cross country skiing in Eastern Oregon tugs at my natural tendency to escape the mess and chaos of the city, and be a hermit out in the woods for a few weeks. While this lifestyle is often romanticized, and fun in theory, than in practicality, I envy those who have this access year round. Growing up in a place like Oregon will do that to you.
Otherwise, you can make the best of it, like the woman I saw cross-country skiing this past month on the Prospect Park ballfields, taking in the last of the snow before the warmer days this week. My mind instantly wanders to where she keeps those skis, and therefore onto the size of her apartment.
In another inclination of sweating, January has been referred to as a disease. Coined by myself, at least. A disease with no cure, no ailments; nothing one can do except close your eyes, fight through the pain, and, of course, sweat it out until the fever (and month) is over.
In a cocktail of resolutions, loss, and grudges against a new year, it becomes a month many wrestle with. For a long time, January was viewed never as a month for rebirth or resolutions, but more so as plainly the same as any other month. Entertaining notions of fun resolutions is all in a good time, such as frequenting a place enough they start to view me as a regular (done and done - thanks Moshava coffee!), or pledging to finish off the full bag of spring mix before it turns (95% success rate). But, I’ve always held strong convictions that “resolutions” are fluid, and their beginning can, well, begin, at any period of time.
But this year, January felt like a decade.
Within the last few years - and let’s be honest, it’s the years dealing with the result of my mother’s passing - January has always set its own sort of line in the sand, designating a metaphorical barrier. There’s everything leading up to the first week of January, the day where she passed, and then there’s everything after. The holiday season marks this vacuum of time not only for the holidays, but of a retreat within my own mind and body. As though nothing can be done to change the intended outcome, doomed to hurtle towards the burning conclusion of the sun.
While Halloween has always been a favorite of mine since I was child, over the past couple years, my love for the spooky holiday has enabled me to double down on said love. Because, deep down, everything after this day will be difficult and hard to comprehend. I am a literal ghost of myself, to some degree.
Post-Halloween is a time period even I don’t understand, or necessarily feel, until the distance of the anniversary of her death widens. My routines are out of sync, my mind is thick with fog, and I fear I’ll never find anything to ground me to this earth. Lost and adrift, attempting to cling to some metaphorical life-raft, whether that be meditation, running, or even music. Most times, these devices are not enough.
January feels so displaced, as though you’re grasping for some semblance of footing. Like cleaning up after a party in a house you’ve never been in, for a celebration you never attended.
You never know what you’re in until you’re out of it. I think about this saying a lot. As much as I would love to consider myself self-aware, it’s either too much, or not enough. Or maybe it’s never possible to know until you’re out of it.
The after is the part we’re in now; the part where my body, mind, and even soul, feel a little bit more carefree, and the ability to make choices and decisions about my own future seem to become a little bit easier to handle.
Everything prior, is just closing my eyes and sweating out the fever.
Cory
PS: Last Saturday my body caught something fierce, but went as soon quickly as it arrived. A literal fever for January, even though this post was written prior. Premonition, I suppose.