Points of Light in a Dark Winter

Nothing has changed, really, except there is less of me left.

Maybe this is winter; is this winter, maybe. Maybe almost a year of so many of the same day, doing less and less and feeling more and more tired. It is dark in winter in a way that squeezes the air out.

I find a lot of my energy being spent on dissonance; the push and pull between trying to feel normal and experiencing all that isn’t. I spend a lot of my time on distraction. I manage to write a to-do list of things I won’t do, marking the water line as I go under.

I’m not sure if I’m depressed or if all this shit is just depressing.

Maybe this winter will be over before it swallows us. Sometimes that feels likely. I have one half of the vaccine in my arm and a social media feed quickly filling with others getting the same.

The fantasies I’ve most avoided dwelling on, the thoughts of speaking fully-faced without someone outside of my home, a concert with so many people packed close enough to feel anonymous, happy hours with work friends that turn to invites to things you think you’d hate but you go anyway because adventure and because what would we possibly say no to after all this?

The fantasies of ending teaching days tired like swimming, less like flying.

The fantasies are feeling the smallest bit more real, are joined with guesses I shouldn’t be making about in what month those things might be, and hoping I’m right. And hoping it doesn’t get somehow worse. And hoping we don’t try too soon. And hoping and hoping that the tiny point of light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train headed straight for us.

And even in that wrap of darkness, I have this little light I get to carry, unique in its fragility, familiar in its possibility. Even in this winter, I get to do something that feels just nearly enough like teaching. Even in this winter, I get to work with young people.

And my students, these kids, man. These kids. Somehow through the heavy chaos outside our homes and through the quiet squares of our classroom, we’ve built this thing, this burning ember in a mason jar I carry tightly in both hands.

That ember, all embers, equally as likely to give light or warmth as to smolder to nothingness.

I don’t think there’s a word for the moment that an ember decides what it will be. I don’t know that there could be. We feel close to that moment, and I trust their oxygen.