"November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year, " said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden..."I dare say, but nothing pleasant ever does happen in this family...we go grubbing along, day after day, without a bit of change, and very little fun. We might as well be in a treadmill."
-Louisa May Alcott, "Little Women"
Unlike Miss Meg March, I don't find November to be particularly disagreeable; my beef is with the month of February. Differing months notwithstanding, Meg's opinions may as well be my own. Even during years in which prolonged apocalypses aren't occurring, February is a stupid, wretched month--the best thing that can be said about it is that it's the shortest month, but it's still so wretched that every now and then it pulls an extra day out of its bleak, wintery ass, just to be an even bigger dick. Fuck you, February, and your stupid fucking Leap Years. Fuck off into the sun--except in February, there is no sun. There is only endless grey, and black ice, and deathcicles dropping from the eaves.
And my friends, you know how much I hate the sun. And when we get to the time of year when even I am craving the sun, you know we've had too much winter. Of course, the pandemic makes things so much worse; it keeps most of us from partaking in the cozy, communal activities that normally keep us sane during the cold months.
Still, we've survived. We're in March; a weak sun is shining and if the weather reports are to be believed (and they shouldn't be), we'll have sun for the next several days, although any more, I barely seem to register such curious concepts like days, or weeks, or months. (Except February; I still know what's up with that month.) We're in March, and we are a couple of weeks away from the one-year anniversary of when everything went to shit. A part of me wants to let out a primal scream of disbelief, of grief for a year lost, but really, what have I to scream about? I'm still here, alive and relatively healthy, and able to mourn my old life, to give February the stink-eye, to plan for a day beyond the pandemic.
I'm alive, when 500,000 of my fellow Americans are not. I'm alive, but I hesitate to say I'm living. So while I'm grateful to still be here, you'll forgive me if I cannot muster much by way of joie de vivre. Perhaps as we put more distance between me and February, it will steal back into my life, like a hesitant yet inevitable spring.
If it can steal in with a vaccine, so much the better.
Do any of you struggle with February like I do?
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| Proof that February hates me and wants to kill me. |
February is indeed an awful month, you will get no argument from me! If I recall, your grandmother used to hate November. I wonder what she thought about Feruary?
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