Winter Blues, Circa 2019
My throat hurts. Some days the pain is a low throb, a little devil in the back of my mind whispering obscenities as I go about my day, not loud enough to distract me, but enough that I’m never quite alone with my thoughts. Other days, just breathing becomes an invite to the fury of a company of archers ready to lay waste to my innards.
I was a Winter person before I came to this city. I loved the cold. Now I wake up every morning clinging to my bed, the only reminder of the warmth of Fall, and the warmth of my home. Everything has felt like this since I got back from my time in the African Summer during my winter break. Last semester I spent every moment I could in the company of others. I moved into my friends’ room just to shorten the amount of time I wasn’t with them. I must have my time alone now. I fantasize about the perfect silence of my own room even among company. I fantasize about the warmth of that bed.
Sometimes though, my throat doesn’t ache at all. Sometimes even the cold becomes bearable. On days like those I might even lose track of how much time I spend having fun. Last weekend I dressed myself up and went to a party I got invited to. It felt good dancing and singing and laughing again. I finally spoke to that girl about the date we had planned during the winter break. Days like those are good. Right now, the thought of those days is what gets me out of that warm bed.
It’s funny to think about just how different everything used to be. A lot can change fast.
Just two months earlier, I was spending the first three weeks of my winter break in New York with my best friends Avi, who was currently studying at NYU, and Jade, who’d come by to visit us for his month-and-a-half break before he started second-year in February. We went through five years of high school together, so when Jade told us he was coming to visit Avi and I, we wasted no time in preparing for his arrival.
We did what most nineteen-year-old students from a country where the legal age for most things was eighteen-years old; Drank and Smoked. What started out as a plan to show Jade around the sights of the city became an adventurous descent into the depths of Manhattan.
Unlike my own school, Avi was not only allowed to stay in his room during the break, he could sign-in guests for a couple of days at a time too. Enter Jade and I. For the first two weeks of our Winter Break Jade and I lived, slept and ate in Avi’s room, alongside his roommate. While Jade had some family in the city he was officially staying with, I was on my own without their help. I wasn’t worried. Before I even left my building to move in with Avi a friend gave me one of her old lighters. I don’t know what it was about that lighter, but it put me to ease being with me. It’s not like I ever looked to the lighter for comfort or anything like that, I had my friends for that. It was just something about being able to light that fire whenever I needed it to that was so relieving.
By the third week of Winter Break, just a few days after a phenomenal Christmas and New Year’s Eve, we were found out. The guards at Avi’s building realized Jade and I had been sleeping in the building for nearly double the allowed time for guests. After promptly being kicked out, Jade and I had to make do. For Jade it meant he’d have to sleep at his cousin’s place in Queens which meant an early morning subway back to Manhattan every morning. For me, it meant I had nothing. For my last week of Winter Break in New York before I flew back home to South Africa, I was effectively homeless. At least more than I was the prior two weeks in which I technically broke into and made residence within an NYU residential building.
Walking those streets of New York wasn’t easy knowing no place would welcome me for the next few nights. But back then at least I had my lucky lighter. Through every high and low it never wavered. Who knows, maybe losing it was what started this all. It’s ironic, because Avi stuck through it all right beside me too, though that only brought me the ache this time round…
After getting back to New York after a rejuvenating last two weeks of break spent back home, life felt normal again. We were back at school. Avi and I spent the first week back apart. I was busy catching up with my friends at Pace, he was busy catching up with his at NYU. Nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until I saw him that next weekend that I realized how empty I’d felt going through the week.
We were walking around Union-Square Park and he made a joke. I don’t remember what he said, but I remember how hard I laughed. Within moments my heart sank at the realization that I hadn’t felt like that since before Winter Break ended. I started to notice other things too. I went to sleep earlier now. In my own room. I spent more time alone now than I ever had before, even though I hadn’t seen my friends at Pace in over a month. My best friend used to take the train down to visit me and my friends every weekend. Since I got back, it was the complete opposite. I took the subway to NYU every few days. I only felt more than that ache when I stepped on that four-train going uptown to Union-Square.
I wasn’t homesick. I knew that much. I cut contact with everyone back home not long after I got back to New York. It wasn’t that I didn’t love or miss them. I just didn’t feel the urge to talk to them. I barely felt the urge to talk at all. During Winter Break I admitted my feelings to a girl for whom I feel something I still struggle to describe. She said she’d be willing to see where it goes. A date. She would give me a date to see what this was about. This was a girl I had grown to call a friend over the course of the last semester. Someone dear to me. And I managed to get her to accept my date. When I got back to New York, I didn’t even have the urge to speak to her.
A few days after my realization at NYU I saw her at a restaurant I passed on my walk toward campus. In retrospect, I should’ve known something was up when my heart didn’t start beating faster as soon as I saw her. It went something like this:
“Hey, haven’t seen you in a long while, how’re you doing?”
“Pretty good pretty good. I’m just glad to be back here you know.”
“Yeah.”
And then silence. I could feel it. You’d be hard pressed not to. That invisible wall between us. I know she wanted me to say something about the date. I’d already put in the hard yards, all I needed to do now was seal the deal in-person. I could’ve just done it, I should’ve just done it. But I wouldn’t. It just wasn’t like the smooth conversation of before. It felt broken. Lifeless.
“…”
“Oh yeah, have you seen the twins since you got back?! You three are usually attached at the hip.”
I could almost watch the spark in her eyes go out. Whatever drive or quality I had that made her say yes to that date was gone. We could both tell. I just didn’t have it in me.
“They’re doing fine thanks… They’re only supposed to get here tomorrow, so I had the day to myself.”
If there was a worse way to tell me I missed my shot, I didn’t know it.
“That’s good to hear.”
“Yeah… I should probably get going. I’ve been here a while anyway. Maybe I’ll catch you later another time.”
My dad called me later that day. He was upset I hadn’t spoken to anyone in days. That’s when it really started to sink in that something was wrong. I knew that the ache was more than just a bad day or two. It wasn’t the fact that I needed time alone that made me realize something was wrong. It was the fact that I would seclude myself even when I didn’t want to be alone. It took a lot for me to accept that. Because I knew that once I did, there would be no going back.
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A lot has happened since then.
When I woke up for Valentine’s day, I felt that ache again. I don’t know why. I fell asleep studying in the library not long after. It wasn’t shaping up to be a good day. So, I gave my mom a call, and just listened to her speak for a few minutes before I went back into my work. Later, when I went to the cafeteria for a study break, I passed by an old friend I hadn’t seen since the Fall semester ended. She almost seemed glad to see me. After she left, another friend I hadn’t seen in a while stopped me to give me a handful of Valentine’s day sweets. She said she’d just felt like it. Simply deciding to carry on studying instead of going back to the comfort of my bed made that happen. I know it did. Something about those interactions stayed with me.
Not long after, close to around when I had just about finished a book Avi had lent me before, one of my closer friends invited me out to a party. I remember feeling proud of myself for finishing the book. Must’ve been why I was so excited to go the party. That and probably the fact that I didn’t feel like spending another night alone in my room. I shaved, went to a hairdresser, and put on an outfit I’d been saving for a good day. It went well. I even got to pull out a few moves for a crowd that started to surround me on the dance-floor. The girl showed up. And for the first time since winter break, I felt that thing again when I looked at her. We even spoke about the date. After we hangout for a bit she left me with a wink and went back to the party.
It was after that party that really, that I started to try and do something about the ache. That seems like all it took, a conscious decision to try. I remembered how much I loved spending time in my friends’ rooms, so I began to visit them again. I started to listen to new music. Even made my bed after waking up one time. Slowly but surely, I had begun to rebuild the parts of myself I had allowed to rust.
That’s not to say the bad days don’t still come around every once in a while, to catch up with me. I couldn’t get out of bed on time for class last week. And I still have the urge to distance myself from the world sometimes, it’s just that I know I’ve come a long way from before. It’s even begun to feel as though the ache and I have lost the will to continue fighting each other. At this point, I still haven’t decided if I want it to stay or not. Maybe it’s grown on me a little. I guess we’ll have to wait and see
