If I ever again have to read with my own eyes someone who lives in England longing for the icy embrace of autumn, I will...probably just wish I could go on holiday about it.
Sweater weather, hot chocolate, shit movies, Halloween, Christmas songs, fallen leaves, big puddles, dirty parks...none of these things are an acceptable trade for the big, beautiful sun, especially when you are depressed (me) or have circulation issues (me) or just look hotter with a nice, deep tan in summer clothes, hiding behind giant sunglasses (me).
Autumn means winter, and winter means death, and longing for autumn means you long for death. That is science.
I spend my entire year, every year thinking about winter, because I am insane, and because winter makes me even more so. I have zero concept of time, so as far as I am aware, even in the warm arms of June, winter is always just around the bend. I am not simply a bitter old bitch denying jumper-shaggers their blanky time every evening, but a chronically depressed and cold person whose depression intensifies to often suicidal levels with the onset of early evenings.
The winter drains the life and soul out of me, out of my skin, my heart, my brain. I am very sensitive to everything: to seasonal shifts, to temperature, to air pressure. The cold and all that comes with it makes the blood pressure issues in my brain worse, makes my joints fall apart, makes me fall asleep standing up. It makes me tired and mean, sluggish and snappy, lazy and bored. It makes me all of the things that I am fundamentally not, and that with a healthy supply of vitamin D, I can stave off.
I first realised I had a little problem with the winter when I was 17. I spent those months skipping school, drinking coffee constantly, self-medicating, and retreating into a husk of myself. I realised I had always done it. I would do it for many more years, too, and despite investing in a high-grade SAD lamp and choking down Vitamin D tablets, it didn’t fix anything. I realised I didn’t even form memories properly in the winter, that despite how sharp my recollection generally is, October - March was a grey sludge in my mind’s eye. As a bartender, I had to work nonstop through the Christmas period, and my lifestyle often got, uh, unhealthy.
When I moved away things got better, but I didn’t have the money to pursue making them actually better, until a couple of years ago. In 2018 I went for my first winter holiday, to Malta, and the boost was enough to see me through to January, when I disappeared to LA for three months. Later that year, in November, I went to LA again, and it was enough to just about get me through. I felt so lucky to be able to escape the thing I feared most: darkness.
This year will be different, for everyone. We have spent the summer – an unusually bright, warm, dry, consistent summer – chasing every little bit of joy we can. We’ve only been able to see our friends outside, and as a result, we’ve squeezed every drop out of it. It was one of my all-time favourite British summers, forced as I was to explore the area around me, to avoid people and find new places to lay out and read. I enjoyed it, and more than that, the consistency made me healthier, more productive, tanned in England during a pandemic even. I have felt like myself.
That’ll likely end soon, and I have no control over it, like every year. This year is different: I fear that, for even people who are usually fine, the collective effects of an England winter stuck indoors with zero relief, no certainty, no future, no deadline will be dire. We don’t know what is next, and I am fucking terrified of what four or five or seven months of English winter without the prospect of a break will do. The winter takes away the things I like most about myself and about my life.
As the great Conor Oberst once screamed: I scream for the sunlight or a car to take me anywhere/ just get me past this dead and eternal snow/ because I swear that I am dying, slowly, but it's happening / so if there is a perfect spring that's waiting somewhere / just take me there.
But hey, sweater weather, huh? Brr! Fun!
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