February

February isn't a month, exactly. It isn't a time, a chunk of the calendar that just happens to fall at a certain point between the heart of winter and the first lying lover's promise of spring. It's an adjective, and a curse, and a state of mind. It's gray, if gray were a verb. It's coldness that moves beyond your toes and into the bones of your feet and around your shoulders so that even after you're warm, you still can't quite remember to uncurl and straighten your spine and breathe deep. It's forgetting that there are colors in the world that haven't had all of the life and vibrancy leached out of them by an eternity of days without sun. It's hearing the word 'delight' and not being able to remember what it means.

I wish I knew what I want right now. When I'm at work, I'm tired and miserable and drained, and can't imagine anything that I want more than to spend an entire day at home, curled up under a warm blanket with a pot of tea and my cats and a favorite book, one whose words and ins and outs I know as well as the patterns of thoughts in my own mind.

And when I have a day off, and have the potential to do that, I feel lost and stranded and alone, and when I try to read the words aren't right and the story doesn't flow and the words don't mean anything. And when I try to take the time to unplug and unwind, the minutes stretch into hours and the emptiness of them swallows me up with the enormity of everything I'm not doing and everyone I'm not doing it with.

So I seek out people, and find ways to fill my time and space with doing stuff. Anything. Moving, acting, talking, being useful and productive and accomplishing whatever I can. Except once I'm there, the presence of other people is like a stone in my shoe, keeping me from being comfortable, keeping anything from flowing smoothly, and I can't relax and everything seems painful and irritating and all I want is to be home alone.

I think I have Restless Mind Syndrome. It is so damn february here it hurts.