winter blues

it's worse before it gets better

Photo by Henrik Dønnestad on Unsplash

I didn’t intend to find myself on the bedroom floor, but while on my knees looking for an earplug that rolled under the dresser, I just sank further until I lay there like a shored starfish. I let my hands rest on my stomach and tried to follow my breathing. Headspace once offered a year of meditation for £1.99, and like the deep discounter I am, I jumped on that price. I gave up using it after three days, but I do remember the deep breath work.

I experience this monotony at the beginning of every year. Last March, I cried for three weeks; the type of cry that makes you need to take a nap afterwards because you are physically tired. I feel like I’ve been treading water, and I’ve stopped just briefly. My head sinks below, and bubbles form in front of my face.

I lost a favourite bookmark a few months ago — it was a sticker of a ghost wearing a green bucket hat, and holding a grumpy cat. Stupid but it made me laugh. I bought it in a quirky stationery store in Korea, which means it’s practically irreplaceable. I ransacked the house for it. I cried over it, which was dumb, but the small things brought comfort.

I’ve done this long enough to recognise the moment my seasonal depression settles in, anchoring itself deep in my brain and holding on for weeks before finally loosening its grip. It arrives like clockwork, precise as an arrow, aimed straight at my amygdala. For three weeks, I move through the world as if underwater — slow and detached. Words pass through me without landing. My body goes through the motions while my mind lags, as if a crucial connection has been severed and my brain is the last to realise. Last week B came home and I was buried under the covers in bed, the blinds drawn shut. I never nap. He tip-toed in and slid in next to me. We lay together, cocooned in each other. I kept my cheek close to his chest, the rhythmic beat of his heart thump, thump, thump, a metronome to anchor myself to. I hate the vulnerability that seeps from me and he knows. We’ve been through this before. And we’ll get through it again. But my mind spirals into chaos as I wonder how do I make this disappear. There has to be more to it than just waiting. Am I overreacting? Am I abnormal?

The truth is, I’m not creating right now as much as I want to. I’m just trying to get by. I’ve mentioned before that I was working on a novel’s first draft. It’s been sitting half-written for months. I feel disappointed that I can’t summon the energy to write. Funnily enough, I even wrote about that feeling. I get crazed moments to write and then it dies quickly and I wonder if I’ll ever manage to sustain it long enough to complete my story. It’s been bothering me how much I’ve been stuck on not creating. The mental baggage of this trivial worry has me in a chokehold. These last few weeks, being a writer has been the last thing on my mind. And yet, I think about writing all the time. I think about topics, what I would say to you, what I would write each week. I always try to connect you to my feelings, but I’m currently in such a state of blue. I don’t want to write sad things to you each week. It’s not fun for you to read.

I know that I will never stop creating, not truly, but when I feel this feeling of in-between, I curl up inside. Among everything else, I like consistency. I know right now I am stuck in the mundanity of life, trapped in a day-to-day that feels a little hopeless and a lot overwhelming. I know that what brings me joy right now is reading in the evening and forcing myself to clear my headspace with walks while the weather is mild. But that doesn’t pay the bills. I sometimes wish I could quit my job entirely and work in a bookshop or a cafe by the sea. It wouldn’t pay much but I wonder if if it would give me the break I need to find what I like. I know I’m a realist first, and a dreamer second and would never leap without considering the height from which I’d fall.

And maybe it’s a bit of winter angst but I feel this whoosh, like I’m forgetting something or like I’m missing out, like life is pumping ahead at full speed and I looked down for just a brief moment to find that I’ve missed the train entirely. You know, I did a lot of things last year, but I can’t remember any of it. Perhaps it’s just a result of a life lived, things move on at a quick pace when you don’t savour it. Maybe I’m still on the platform chasing the tail end of the train, hoping I will take that last leap before the chance is gone for good.

And in the midst of all of it, when I feel the fog heaviest and I’m almost sure this feeling will never get any better, I think of not just this winter but of all the winters past and the winters I will have. I think of where I’ll be next year. I’ve worked it out, I have one or two more winters before I have children. It’s weird to consider that, in a number of years I could count on a single hand, my entire life, my entire being, could become something else entirely. I get maybe two more summers of free travelling, of savouring the quietness before it all warps into something entirely new. Something I won’t have control over. The time is so small that it could run away from me so easily.

Twenty-seven feels like standing in the doorway between youth and something heavier, something unnamed. The last stretch of twilight sky still holds onto traces of colour, but the stars are already creeping in. It’s a strange, liminal space. Too old for reckless abandon, too young to have it all figured out. It’s watching childhood landmarks shrink in the rearview mirror while the road ahead remains frustratingly unclear. Twenty-seven is both restless and resigned. It is wanting more, but not always knowing what “more” even means. It is feeling the echo of every version of yourself you’ve ever been, layered like sediment beneath your skin. It is laughter laced with nostalgia, ambition tangled with doubt, hope flickering even when you try to snuff it out.

It is, perhaps, the journey towards a realisation; that no one ever really arrives — we are always becoming. And that is a lot to think about.

But, for now, I find my comfort on the bedroom floor.

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