When Light Leaves Early
winter and other things
Every year around this time, the world seems to dim a little earlier than it should. The sun clocks out before I am mentally prepared, the temperature drops in that unceremonious way cold air always arrives, and suddenly the simple act of getting out of bed feels like a negotiation with a stern internal board of directors. There is a heaviness to the mornings that did not exist in September, a kind of internal static that makes everything feel a little muted. Afternoons shrink until they resemble a technical error. The day is there and then it is not. This is where Seasonal Affective Disorder begins its slow work. It is not theatrical. It does not kick down the door. It simply walks into the room, sits in the corner, and waits for you to notice that your motivation is now operating on airport Wi-Fi.
I have learned that the worst part is not the sadness or the fatigue. It is the confusion that slides in quietly and rearranges the furniture of your thoughts. The delay between wanting to do something and actually being able to start. The subtle fog that makes even simple tasks feel like a puzzle with one missing piece. The quiet question that loops without punctuation. Why am I like this right now. As if the calendar did not just subtract two hours of sunlight and expect us to carry on with enthusiasm. You can know the biology and still feel personally insulted by the darkness. Circadian rhythms shift. Neurotransmitters misbehave. Your own brain begins negotiating with the sun as if it has any leverage. None of it stops the strange feeling that you have drifted slightly sideways inside your own life. Still, the Stoics remind us that while we cannot control the season, we can control our response, and that control does not have to look impressive. It only needs to be intentional.
So I keep a small list of winter habits. They are not the glamorous habits you see online where a person makes tea in slow motion and has a house with perfect natural light. Mine are ordinary and sometimes slightly chaotic. I try to get ten minutes of daylight even when the sky looks like low-resolution clip art. I turn on a lamp bright enough to convince my brain that the sun has not forgotten me. I follow a morning routine even if I feel like a character being manually animated by someone who is only sort of paying attention. I eat something warm because warmth is one of the few things winter cannot argue with. I stretch until my muscles stop protesting. I listen to music that lifts me half an inch because half an inch is still movement. I do not strive for transformation. I aim for continuity.
None of this cures anything. These habits operate more like a hand placed gently on my shoulder. They remind me to keep going, to stay connected to myself even when I feel slightly unplugged from everything else. They help me remember that a slow day is still a day, and a dim mood is still a mood that will eventually shift. They help me recognize that being human in winter is not a flaw. It is simply one of the conditions of being here.
SAD teaches a Stoic lesson with unsettling precision. You do not control your mind entirely, and you are not helpless either. Light helps. Routine helps. Saying the truth out loud helps. Quiet honesty helps in ways loud optimism never will. Accepting that you are influenced by the world around you helps most of all. You are not separate from nature. You are part of it. Winter is not a malfunction. It is a pattern, both in the weather and in your body.
There is something grounding about remembering this. The darkness arrives and it also leaves. The cold settles in and eventually decides it has overstayed its welcome. The trees conserve their energy, shed what they do not need, and rest without apologizing. I am trying to learn from the trees, although I notice I make the process unnecessarily dramatic in a way they never do. They simply adapt. I analyze the adaptation and wonder why it is taking so long.
Winter will drag its feet for a while. That is its seasonal privilege. Ours is to stay warm on the inside long enough to greet the sun again when it returns, and to do so without pretending we were not changed along the way.
Epilogue
Last winter I tried to outsmart the season. I convinced myself I could keep the same pace, the same expectations, the same everything. By January I felt like someone had unplugged me and forgotten to reconnect the cord. My thoughts were slow, my energy was suspiciously unreliable, and I kept losing track of simple things like where my keys were or what I was supposed to be doing. Here is the cautionary part. If you do not acknowledge winter, it will eventually tap you on the shoulder and ask why you have been ignoring it.
My advice is uncomplicated. Choose a single habit you can maintain even when you are operating at sixty percent. One small thing that reminds you that you are on your own team. A lamp. A walk. A quiet moment that is yours alone.
And here is the question I keep returning to, especially on the days that feel too dim. If the season is going to shape you no matter what, how will you decide who you become while it does the shaping?
-W.B. Huxley