In my twenty-five-plus (plus how many doesn’t need to be clarified exactly) years of living, I will confess that I have developed an unbreakable habit of speaking to myself. In my head, out loud, it is an ever-reliable constant.
There are many phrases that have become personal mantras that I will inevitably fall back on to repeat when times are tough.
One of my personal favourites; “The sun will rise again tomorrow.”
It is a certainty that has anchored me through the choppiest of waters. No matter how the winds howl, or how deeply the dark swallows the skies, or how dangerously close I come to mentally capsizing in an ocean of overwhelming thoughts and feelings…my sense of hope stays afloat. I cling to the mast of my weather-worn, battered little boat, exhausted, but safe in the knowledge that once the storm passes, the seas will calm and the sun will rise over the horizon, bringing with it a new day and fresh sense of clarity.
It is a certainty that tomorrow, the sun will rise again, and January will be over. We have done it. We have faced each one of these thirty-one days with as much strength and grace and optimism as we could possibly muster, and with that, the first Chapter of 2021 has drawn to a close.
There has always been cause for celebration in ‘surviving’ January. With every cashed payslip, every crisp, cold drop of Sauvignon Blanc or every first bite of a piping hot bowl of pasta buried under mounds of sweet, nutty Parmesan, we wave goodbye to the inevitable tightening of the pursestrings after Christmas, to Dry January, to Veganuary, to ‘Blue Monday’.
Those ‘restrictions’, we thought, were challenging enough. These ones, however, have proven to be altogether more difficult. The excitement of Zoom quizzes has long faded, cast aside as a short-lived fad, gathering dust with the Harlem Shake and fidget spinners.
It is perfectly acceptable to herald surviving these last thirty-one days as a triumph. We made it. We crawled, aching, on our hands and knees through the l o ng, grey inertia and we are here, exhausted and collapsed in a heap on the finish line, arms wide open, waiting for the light of February’s first sunrise to break through the clouds and dance across our outstretched fingers.
If you take anything from reading this – and I am also speaking this to myself – let it be a sense of pride. This life we are living on loop is not normal, despite our adaptations. It is not a ‘new normal’, it is a temporary period of incredible abnormality that we are all simply doing our best to get through.
This should not just be shrugged off as ‘what life is like now’, as if it were simply a rise in train fares or a new Facebook layout, and there is not a person alive who could possibly be deemed anything other than entirely reasonable for finding the survival of another twenty-four hours to be an absolutely mammoth feat of physical, mental and emotional resilience.
I have written previously on how there is joy to be found, better days to come and wondrous moments that will befall each and every one of us that we cannot possibly predict yet. But I want to clarify – joy is not being held ransom. Good days and wonderful memories are not rationed and only ready for distribution ‘Once This Is All Over’. They are here and now and intersperse our strange existence even when we least expect it.
Last Sunday, snow fell across the South-East and it was as if all the January Blues had been covered by a thick, magical blanket of white. Not gone, but out of sight. Suddenly, the fear, the uncertainty, the sadness – it all scattered for a day, caught in the icy winds and swirl of snowflakes.
For one glorious day, it was as though we were kids again! The giddy spin of a snow day! Not a worry in our heads, just an excited bluster of hats, scarves, and gloves, eagerly racing outside to crunch in the fresh snow. It was a beautiful blur of red cheeks and sparkling eyes, parks filled with sledging children and snowball fights, lopsided snowmen and excitable dogs. For one day, we seized the opportunity for goodness and glee and it was pure magic.
Tomorrow’s dawn will bring Monday the First, Chapter Two. A new week, a fresh month, a blank page. The days will be warmer, lighter, brighter. Buds will bloom and birds will fill the air with song, we will bask in the glow of sweet romances for Valentine’s Day and pile plates high with even sweeter pancakes for Shrove Tuesday.
Everything else? Each of the twenty-eight days of this mercifully short month, are open to possibility. The sunrises may be certain, but what happens between each one is up to us.
