Wintering

What a difference a year makes

My favorite spot during one of my favorite times of the year.

It’s incredible how much can change in a year. How in the moment, it feels like it’s going to be that way forever, but how little by little, day by day, things change and before you know it, they’re entirely different. Maybe not in every way, but in enough ways that add up to make it noticeable.

This time last year I was lost. I was coming off the high of having quit my job, a buzz that lasted me through the end of the summer and into my first few freelance projects for friends. My newly-found free time was invigorating, giving me the energy to pursue many disparate things at once. But as the seasons started to change and the days grew darker, my projects wrapped themselves up and my energy began to dwindle. I had sufficiently distracted myself, dipping my toes in all the pools of opportunity glistening under the summer sun, but when I finally looked up, it was December. With projects complete and nothing else on the horizon, the future felt bleak.

Instead of nesting, letting myself cozy into the comforts of the holidays and giving myself the time to restore for my next endeavor, I panicked. I love Christmas, but my relationship with money always makes it complicated. Giving, somehow, has always come with guilt: Did I spend too much? Did I spend too little? Will they like it? Are they going to use it? Thinking of gifts takes a whole hemisphere of my brain and an even larger portion of my energy, something I’m growing increasingly less willing to spend. Not to mention the timeline, which seems to grow shorter and shorter every year. August becomes Thanksgiving at break-neck speed, making getting into the holiday spirit feel more like a sprint. I’m not even a parent, so my load is relatively light, yet I always get overwhelmed. I now understand why the holidays nearly always give my mother hives. But I digress. Despite having savings that gave me a little wiggle room and a supportive partner, my guilt this time last year was all-consuming. Without an income, I felt pressure – from no one other than myself, really – to make money in order to justify the spending.

The worst part was I didn’t just let myself feel guilt, I piled shame on top of it. How could I quit a stable job just because I “didn’t like it?” How could I place the burden of earning for the household all on Will’s shoulders? How could I be so irresponsible, so selfish?

I was in the thick of a shame spiral and my annual reflection, which I add to the same journal every year, only thrust me deeper. I looked back at 2021, the year I got married, got our dog, our house, a promotion. It was a year of high highs where things were finally falling into place. Things couldn’t get higher, in fact, so fall they did. On its own and in comparison to 2021, 2022 was my lowest yet (even more so than 2020, which kept my therapist healthily employed and sent me to Sertraline). I’d started 2022 with a layoff, a sucker punch right to the spirit. At first, I’d felt free. I didn’t want to play the corporate game, and now I didn’t have to. But I didn’t have a choice in the matter, which was what hurt the most.

And here I was, eleven months later, still shackled to my shame, carrying it with me into Christmas and the new year, letting it suck away all of the joy. Luckily, I had a coach, a wonderful woman I’d found a few months prior, who helped me navigate some of these feelings. “All you need to do right now is let yourself grieve,” she told me. And when she said it, I cried. I cried these big, cathartic tears. I didn’t know I needed it, but having someone give me permission to lean in did indeed lift some of the load. However, I didn’t I fully let go. I still held on to a corner of that guilt like a receipt, a failsafe.

From where I sit now, on the same couch in the same living room with the same holiday decorations, I see how far I’ve come since then. I know the opportunities that came my way, the windows that opened all because a door closed. I see the space I was able to clear in my life to make way for bigger, better, more fulfilling adventures. I feel the sometimes-frenetic energy of switching between almost too many opportunities, as well as the confidence and gratitude that come with them. I see myself then, the shattered shell – so small and so fragile – so doubtful of herself and her abilities, and I wish I could hold her and tell her to just wait. To sit tight and just let herself be lost. To let this be her season of wintering, of wandering through the woods. To trust that she’ll get where she needs to go eventually.

Because here she is, a year later, really liking where she’s ended up.