January Is An Exhausting Month
A reminder to take the time to rest and have the courage to start a new year.
What I imagine cosy winter reading nooks to look like. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash
January is an exhausting month. It's exhausting to figure out life after the holidays have ended. So much time is spent looking forward to the holidays and New Year's Eve. Preparing food, making plans with friends and family, buying and making and wrapping and unwrapping gifts, and celebrating life. Toward the end of 2023, there was so much excitement about the new year and what the new year will bring. It felt like a massive weight on my shoulders, in my stomach, and on my heart. Once the holidays and the new year celebrations are over, it feels like whiplash. January is the hangover of the prior year.
Now that it's January 2024, it's time to get the year rolling. To reflect: What am I going to do?
I've been sleeping a lot. Resting. I've been trying to figure out why this year—this month—has been so heavy in particular.
There's a book called The Body Keeps the Score by psychiatrist and author Bessel van der Kolk about the mind in connection with the body and how the body is trying to communicate. It's all about trauma, healing and recovery.
“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
I reflected. It took me a while to realize that for the past few years, January has always been a very intense time.
My past January’s:
January 2020: I knew Mom was going to be having her hip-replacement surgery.
January 2021: Mom was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called sarcoma.
January 2022: After a brief period of remission in 2021, Mom's sarcoma came back for good.
January 2023: The first year spent without Mom living in it.
January 2024: The first year spent beyond my master's program. What's next?
When Mom was dying, we talked about my next steps. We talked about moving to the UK for my master's program in Scotland. But now that I've graduated from my master's program, I'm not able to talk to her about what's next.
It's strange to realize this is the first year where I'm doing something without having talked to Mom about it.
Even though Mom wasn't alive in 2023, I had a network of friends to lean on and my master's program to keep me occupied. I've spoken with friends, old and new, about loss, grieving, and heartache. We talked about how the feeling of wanting to see them again never really lessens over time.
January 2024 is a time of softness and reflecting what my body is trying to tell me. It's okay to rest.
After all, this year is the start of the rest of my life.
It's a recalibration.
When Mom was alive, it was all about survival mode. I was her caregiver during her radiation, surgeries, post-surgeries, and while she was dying. I helped change her bandages, prepared meals, and assisted her in the bathroom. When she walked to her chair in the family room from her bedroom I helped her with the oxygen machine. I had to be present. I had to be on call. There was a lot of pressure in administering morphine, dressing wounds, and changing Depends.
Now that I don't have the pressure of being someone's caregiver, my body is recalibrating. I'm not in fight or flight mode. I'm just learning how to live again.
Mom's cancer diagnosis completely transformed my life as a caregiver. It changed the trajectory of my life. Her death jump started my life. I grew up.
However, I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I've been watching a lot of TV shows in January. In winter, I want to be cosy, snuggled up with a blanket and a warm cup of tea. My aunt recommended The Bear and I watched the two seasons in a few days. An incredible show. Toward the end of the second season, the main character is talking about waiting for the other shoe to drop. The other character, after a moment of reflection, asks: "What if there is no other shoe?"
I've realized that January is a period of getting ready, like I have to prepare myself for what terrible thing is going to happen next. Who else is going to need my car? What else is going to happen?
When is the other shoe going to drop?
But what if there is no other shoe?
I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I love the movies. I love the music. However...I have a secret. I've never actually read The Lord of the Rings. I know. I know! Even when they were required reading for my master's program, I still didn't read them. (My excuse was I had too much on my plate with grief.) That being said, I've just finished The Fellowship of the Ring and I'm now on The Two Towers. This past December, I re-watched the three movies. The first two on my own and the third one with friends for a friend's birthday. There's a particular scene in the third film that has stayed with me with each viewing. There's a final battle, and Eowyn and Merry are riding into battle at Gondor. They approach the battlefield and see the sheer scope of the army in front of them.
The camera pans over Merry's face, eyes wide in terror. Eowyn places her arm around him and says, "Courage, Merry. Courage for our friends."
It's a way of looking at impossible situations and still rising up to meet it.
Of course, cancer is different than a battle in a fantasy novel. However, in life, it's just looking at the impossible and wondering: How am I going to get through this?
And yet we still find the strength to do so.
We still have courage.
January is the time of thinking about what is next. It is a time of having the courage to figure out what is next. To keep going.
Mom isn't here to talk with me about what's next. She's been dead for a year and a half. There's still part of me that is this little child wanting to talk to their Mom. I feel like it will never go away.
All of this to say: The new year is exhausting. There's still a lot I'm sorting through internally with memories and thoughts.
With courage, we will get through this year.
And the next, and the next, and the next, ad infinitum.
Madeline Wahl is a recent graduate with an MLitt in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She is a writer, solo traveler, and millennial caregiver to her mom, who recently passed from terminal cancer. Her writing has appeared on Reader's Digest, HuffPost, Red Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others. She is working on her first novel in YA Fantasy and her first nonfiction book proposal on millennial caregiving.