Building my year
It’s lost on me how January breathed in the new year and instead of exhaling, it held on to the hope that the year is only yet to come. By February I realize the year is breathing now and all the time. Each day is a timid inhale that releases only in the quiet hours of the night, after the lights are turned off and the footprints of my upstairs neighbors peter out with my thoughts. January feels the same every year, yet as long as I live there will always be a new January, fraught with different worries, hopes, and intermittent joys.
If each year is a house, construction begins on January 1st. As the month ends, I look around the walls of January’s room and I don’t know why but the walls are blank. Perhaps the cold winter air makes the room feel sterile and gray, but maybe if I stay long enough I’ll see the sunlight peek through the tattered curtains. Languidly I walk into February, looking around knowing I’ll soon be out. Because the month feels over before it even begins, I forget to settle into my space. In fact, if I’m honest with myself, I’m already imagining what my rooms will look like in spring.
I make no goals this month other than to open up a bit more, but the shutters on the windows tell me it’s not the time. Even if I needed the windows open I’m not sure I could by sheer will alone. Instead I learn to enjoy the darkness and some days I fill the room with every bulb I can find. There are moments when the room is so light I hardly remember it hasn’t been illuminated by real sun in years. Halfway through February I remind myself that as much as I want the sun, the winter serves its purpose as the base of the year, the base of the house. I try to make each day a living breathing memory because it already is whether I’m conscious of it or not. And when the shutters break open and I have no choice but to surrender to the elements, I know January will keep me stable even if the winds and rains try to break my house down. Slowly I will build my house with each passing month until the year is sitting solid in my rearview as I walk into January’s new bones again.
artist: Peter Sheeler