Edited by: Advaita Singh
The semester is ending, and so is the year. Everyone is planning their next semester trajectories, making new year resolutions, and have already got their summer internships in place. On the other hand, I am breaking my head over establishing a stable relationship with a month in a year that comes every year. Why does it matter to me? I do not know, I am probably trying to avoid paying attention to more pressing things in my life like graduating and making a career.
Anyway, let’s not digress and focus on the matter or, in this case, the month at hand. December is both, my most favourite as well as my least favourite month of the year. I am the happiest in its first week because nineteen years ago, on the very first day of December, my mother had me and apparently it is a huge thing so I get treated like I own the world for an entire week. However, the story doesn’t end well because I get unbelievably sad and anxious by the next week.
I have always told myself that I feel low because I am not getting any more attention. I mean it is not easy to go from being treated like a queen to being treated like nothing in less than a week. Regardless, now I know that I don’t miss the attention. I seek it so that I can avoid processing the several emotions that the end of a year brings.
The feeling of not having done enough in the past 11 months and the unpredictability of the coming year is not the greatest combination of emotions to experience. Now more than ever, concerning the pandemic and the emergence of the new variant, my year-end anxiety has gone off the charts. And, this is what confuses me. Shouldn’t I be feeling warm and nice considering this is my birthday month and it marks the beginning of a new year for me? Shouldn’t I be feeling grateful for the fact that I didn’t lose loved ones to what was the darkest year I have witnessed in my lifetime? Shouldn’t I be counting my blessings and hoping for more to come? Why is it that I am letting myself be peer-pressured into anxiety?
Honestly, I do not know the exact answers to these questions. But, if I had to guess it would be our tendency to attach meaning and measurements to something as natural as the passing of time. I don’t see why it is important to measure how successful a particular year was based on your achievements. And, I really do not understand the obsession with micro-managing a huge chunk of time (a year) by making resolutions that everyone knows they are not going to stick to. Why cannot we let a year pass without making a big deal out of it? If one thinks that reflecting on themselves, in the last month or day of the year is enough, then I am sorry to break your bubble —it isn’t. Reflection should not be an annual ritual, but a daily practice. Only then it is advantageous. Otherwise, it is nothing but a trend you do for the gram.
I hate digressing, but I keep doing it. My sincere apologies. Coming back to my relationship with December, I think I have accepted that we share a bitter-sweet relationship. I can neither place it in the category of a friend or a foe. I will either have to be okay with having an in-between/transitional relationship with it or I will have to practice what I preached in the above paragraph. Doing the former seems easier for now, so I will have to leave this article with an unresolved question, and I think that is completely okay.