Every year it happens. I breathe deeply of the last days of Christmas, smile warmly and embrace the promise of a new year, vow to write and clean and sing and play through the dark days of winter into spring’s warming light. You know the feeling, the zing and glow of a new relationship, the ecstacy of snuggling with a love both new and familiar, the letting go into a sparkling river of hope and joy that carries you forward in a million dots of delight that nothing can touch or tame.

Until it happens. By the second week of January and the second snowstorm, irritable from lack of sunlight and frozen in the grey reality that is an east coast winter, life officially sucks. Why? Why after living my entire life in the same cycle of seasons does this take me by surprise every year, and why do I end up feeling the same way every time? It’s like being in a bad relationship, one that no longer supports or serves but its parties are too tired, too indifferent, too detached to care enough to end it.

And there was my green dot moment, a point of awareness in the gloom. It hit me the other morning as I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, debating whether to get up or stay put. I rolled over and heard the words in my head as clearly as if I had said it out loud.

“Oh, you’re still here …”

You’ve been there, cozy in bed, then you roll over and eye the snoring lump beside you, slammed back to reality. “Oh, you’re still here,” you mutter, in that moment wanting them and all the baggage attached to the relationship gone, but too mired in self-doubt, self-pity, or fear of being alone to say the words, set the plan, make it real. I promise to love January then wish it was July. I promise to love me, then wish I was someone somewhere else.

That morning, I said it, but the only snoring lump in bed was me. I was still here. I was promising for months to love myself but in reality, there were times when I really couldn’t stand myself. I wanted me and all my baggage gone, but then again, I wanted to be healthy and whole. Deep down I do love myself, but rarely do I let myself feel it like I feel the love I have for others. I simply don’t allow it. And when I don’t allow my love for myself, the love I have for others comes out filtered through my own loathing, feeling to them strained, arduous, inauthentic, not always identified, but sensed in a way that can be uncomfortable, unsettling. There can be no intimacy with that sort of chill underlying every breath and action, perpetuating the loneliness, inviting the frustration and then subduing it in a cloud of ‘who cares, there’s no point.’

I want to love January like I love July, for no reason than it is January, just January, with all its storms and cold and wind and darkness and greyness and isolation.  I want to love me like I love others in my life, for no reason other than I’m me, just me. No changes or fixing. Just me. My appearance, my talents, my fears, my stubborn habits, my restlessness, my desires, my crankiness, my joy. I need to embrace it all, stand firm in the things I find painful, allow joy where it beckons. A January nor-easter can freeze you to the bone and bury you in snow. It can also  make your skin tingle, blow the cobwebs from your brain, and coat your world in a powdery cocoon that invites indoor snuggling with cozy blankets, hot tea, and a fresh journal. July with all its warmth and beachy splendour cannot do that. Likewise, I am no beauty in the morning – or any other time of day for that matter – but I am who I want to be in this moment, and have the parts and pride to create what I want in the next moment.

“Oh, you’re still here.” Me speaking is the part of me stuck in the world that is ‘good enough’, safe and cozy by being inert and hidden because nothing is ever good enough or possible. Me listening, that snoring lump in the bed, is me cocooned, ready to toss off the covers and take on another day, with each footstep, each pile of laundry washed and deadline met is another step into a life I am creating.

You bet I’m still here. So is January. And thank God for it all. I don’t want it to be July, not yet. There’s much to do and love right now.

Thanks for being here.