Ink and Vein

I just finished reading Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. It came in on a library hold I’d forgotten that I placed. I already had three other books in progress, but I just added it into the roster since I own the other books and don’t have to return them.

It’s a fitting book to read in January, in the middle of a stretch of cold and dry weather that makes me want to stay in bed all day and that, conversely, makes me want to be out in the fierce cold and brace against the numbness of skin, the runny nose, the watery eyes that will turn into ice on my face.

Staying in bed or at least curled up in blankets has won out, when I haven’t had to go to work or keep an appointment. Mabel (my cat) has been grateful for this, as she sprawls on my lap and melts into the blankets in a big chair by my window where the sun shines through and I can see Mt. Blanca over the top of my landlord’s barn.

I’d be lying if I said I’m doing well, because I’m not. The political atmosphere is terrifying, at home and abroad. Every email or text or messenger DM I receive sets me on edge, not knowing what will be said, not knowing what people will want from me.

I have been told that my capacity for love and compassion is a true gift, that I understand what unconditional love is because I love people as they are, where they are.

I want this to be true.

I’m not feeling very loving right now. I’m feeling tired and impatient.

People want to organize. People want to hold protests. People want to host book clubs. People want to hold events for art and community. People want to tell me how frightened they are. People want me to join new social media platforms because they’re leaving the current ones. People want to make sure we keep in touch. People want to become my friend. People want to connect.

I want to connect, but not in any of the ways that are readily available.

I can’t leave the current platforms because I use them for my work. If I could leave them, I wouldn’t seek a replacement. I would let my digital presence retreat to this blog, to emails, to text messages.

I wouldn’t miss scrolling despite the fact that I’ve become addicted to it. I would miss cute animal videos and funny memes.

I feel isolated, disconnected, separate from people even when I’m in the same room with them. I want to disappear, to retreat from the constant sensory input of daily life.

This desire to disappear is, in many ways, my depression. Staying indoors and cozy against the cold means I haven’t been getting out for walks, and my brain always goes a little sideways when I don’t get outside and when I don’t move enough.

This desire to disappear, too, is actually quite natural. It’s winter, and we’re supposed to be quiet and slow, not in the height of activity and hustle that our culture requires of us.

Katherine May’s book is about this need to winter, this need to rest and retreat from the business of our daily lives. The need to slow down, the need to reflect, the need to take walks and cold swims and follow the cycles of nature instead of the days on the calendar.

It’s hard to feel this need to winter at a time when activity is supremely necessary and important. We aren’t meant to be active now, but the unfortunate and terrifying truth is that we’re watching the rights of our loved ones and ourselves being threatened and stripped away by the current presidential administration. We’re watching decades of civil rights advocacy vanish in a blink. We’re watching measures designed to help our planet and preserve it for the next generations be undone. We’re watching greed and selfishness and cruelty win out.

I’ve never been a person who is able to detach myself from the pain of others. My vivid imagination puts me right in it, whether they are sitting next to me or are across the globe.

We need community now, we need to build community and know our neighbors and look out for each other. But all I want is to retreat inside of myself and shut everything away.

I want to winter. And I can’t winter. I’m sad, and don’t feel I have the luxury of being sad.

Near the end of the book, Katherine May writes,

I’m beginning to think that unhappiness is one of the simple things in life: a pure, basic emotion to be respected, if not savoured. I would never dream of suggesting that we should wallow in misery or shrink from doing everything we can to alleviate it, but I do think it’s instructive. After all, unhappiness has a function: it tells us that something is going wrong. If we don’t allow ourselves the fundamental honesty of our own sadness, then we miss an important cue to adapt.

I’ve been trying to befriend my depression and anxiety for a long time. I’ve accepted that they are part of who I am, just like my freckles, my blue eyes, and my skin that burns too easily in the sun. When the depression gets heavy and the anxiety gets to be too much, it means I need to change something.

I need to walk more, or sleep more, or stay off social media for a while. It means I need to journal, or meditate, or ask a friend for a hug. It means I need warm soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. It means I need to look at the moon or hug a tree.

It might also mean that I need to live in a world where I feel safe, and where other people can feel safe, too. It means I need to live in a community where I believe people care about each other simply because we’re all human. I need to live in a community where we worry about the well-being of others, even if they aren’t our friends and family. I need to live in a community where people don’t believe their private property is more sacred than someone’s life, and where we feel compassion for those with less than us instead of trying to run them out of town. I need to live somewhere where humans stop trying to control the decisions people are allowed to make about their bodies, their lives.

I need to be- we all need to be- somewhere where it is safe to, and where we have the capability to, winter.