If you’re like me, you’re tired of the cold weather and the blizzards that take any sense of self you ever had with them. When I was younger the snow felt like a magic blanket. It meant a day off from school and drinking hot chocolate with my mom. But when you’re in the middle of an extremely stressful midterm season and your depression demands you leave the house at least once a day, the snow no longer feels like a gift but a reminder about the temporality of our lives. It’s hard to remember the joy that comes from the snow as it traps and isolates you from the people you love. How does one stop this feeling from holding you hostage, consuming your every thought, and wearing you down into a shell of a person?Â
By escaping into the world of literature, I force myself to get out of my head, stop ruminating in what can only be described as a very pathetic sadness, and do a simple activity that makes me feel alive again. Reading gives me a break from the terrifying feeling of emptiness that accompanies the cold weather and always provides some much needed perspective in my life. Focusing on the lives of others distracts me from my issues and is a nice way of reminding myself that I am most certainly not alone in my despair, and am not alone in trying to write about it either.Â
Franz Kafka’s experience with alienation and existential dread gives me a strange sense of community. Joan Didion’s essays about political unrest in the 1960s American landscape evokes an expected eerie emotion, similar to one experienced when reflecting on the current political hellscape. Haruki Murakami’s surrealist novels are filled with lonely characters who escape their own lives through the magical worlds they create. Audre Lorde’s writing about identity, self-expression, and resilience inspires me to live differently and to embrace myself without compromise.Â
I consume these books with a vigorous lust for a new frame of mind or an adventure that will subdue my own misery, urging every last word to memory only to then reluctantly forget them a few months later. It’s really not as temporary as I make it out to be and as daunting as it may seem, there is comfort in knowing that there are millions of books waiting to be read. Although I may not get a chance to read them all, there is a never-ending pool of knowledge and ideas that I am fortunate enough to have access to, and I am eager to dive right in.
So, despite this winter being one of the harshest ones in recent memory, I suggest you spend your time inside reading something that you’re interested in or have been meaning to read and escape into the world of literature. Let it give you the joy that your childhood self experienced during the first snow of the season. Let it introduce you to new ideas, new people, new versions of yourself, and give yourself a break from any mental anguish you may be experiencing.