January blues
January always makes me feel blue. I feel like it’s the bluest month of the year. It feels like when you take a nap after a very tiring day, and wake up at the blue hour. Everything is hazy. You look at the window, through the curtains it’s entering that soft blue light almost greyish and you can’t tell whether the night is about to fall or the sun is about to rise.
It’s weird. It makes you feel calm and relaxed at first, and then it gets on your nerves and you start to look frenetically for your phone, for a clock, for someone, for anything that can tell you what time is it, how long have you’ve been sleeping.
I feel like I have been sleeping for years. I’ve been living on a fantasy, where your main responsibility is having good grades and graduate. I loved it. I loved being a student. I was a good one for 22 years and a half. Yes, I was a student since I was a baby. My parents worked so when I was 30 days old they had to put me into a daycare. I had my first student ID before I could even walk.
My years as a student, were spent making friends and losing them, trying new places and outfits, new haircuts and new music. I had a whole lot of crushes, and went to a lot of parties. I had a lot of insecurities and got over quite a few. I hated some teachers and loved others. I looked hopefully at the future where I’ll end up marrying one of my celebrity crushes and we’ll live happily ever after, but enjoyed the free of serious responsibilities time. I went to concerts and festivals. I spent a month on Canada, away from everything I knew. I laughed and cried. I kissed and avoided boys.
I developed into everything I am today.
But I’m awake now. I knew this day would come, but I’m still frightened. I have to get out of the house even if nothing can tell me what time it is. I don’t know if I’m going to be received with a bright warm day or a cold windy night. I don’t know what I should wear, who’s waiting outside. I can only guess and hope.
It’s even worse because I always told everyone I couldn’t wait to get out of this dream, I wanted to live. I’ve always been the daughter that has clear goals. Never confused about her next step, because she always knew what she wanted. And that’s the problem.
-
Growing up, adults always asked me what do I wanted to be when I was older. The answer changed a lot: a teacher, a veterinarian, a restaurant owner, a chef. But I wasn’t really sure about any of it, it just seemed fun and something tangible. Unlike my younger sister who usually went for princess, waitress or ballet dancer.
I was used to being realistic, my parents had us enrolled on a private school because they wanted the best education for us, even if they struggled to pay for it. Since I was six years old, I realized the kids on my school had far better clothes, toys, school supplies and opportunities than me. I was aware too, that it would be unfair to ask my parents more than they were already struggling to provide us with. My sister was always more dramatic, I think she just refused to accept the facts.
It all changed when I was eleven years old. My parents put us both on a new school that seemed promising. One day while I was on recess, I saw a curly haired girl sitting on the stairs at the back of the playground. She was reading a book, a black book with pale hands holding an apple as a cover. Honestly, I can’t recall what I was thinking or what came over me, but I sat next to her and started reading above her shoulder. And she didn’t say a thing; she just started to ask me if I was done before changing the page.
When the recess finished I asked what was that book all about (because I didn’t got completely what was going on) and she told me what seemed like the best story I could ever imagine, about vampires and a girl who was lonely and awkward like me. She told me it was called ‘Twilight’ and she could let me borrow it when she was finished.
She did and that was the beginning of our now 10-years-old friendship, and of my burning love for novels. I was consumed by them. I read as much as I could, every book she would borrow me, every interesting young adult book I could find on the internet as a pdf. I even started to read fanfics. I loved it. I loved getting lost on a world that wasn’t real but felt like it.
From that time on, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a novelist. I wanted to spend my days writing stories and reading and nothing else. But that’s hard to tell your parents, who love you and want you to have a secure future and a degree.
I did a lot of research and there was no university on Mexico who offered a career on creative writing. And later I realized my parents were not going to be able to afford sending me to a university outside this city, let alone the country. Realistic me came over and started to look for something closer, my parents always told me they would support whatever career I chose, but this was out of their possibilities. I finally landed on Communications. I told them I wanted to work on an editorial and this was the closest I could get here. They accepted.
-
It’s been fifty six days since my graduation party, where all my friends from all stages of my life and my favorite part of my family were reunited, along with all the friends and families of my favorite classmates. I wore a pale pink dress that was flowy and backless and really romantic. We all ate and danced and laughed, I even drank a lot. It was a fuzz of songs and feelings and toasts.
It’s been forty three days since my actual graduation. I wore the cap and gown, and black flats so I wouldn’t trip when I had to go on stage. After a speech from the headmaster, a girl sang ‘Hopelessly devoted to you’ from Grease, and that was when it actually hit me that that was it. It was the end of an era. It was over. Literally. Two weeks after that, the 2020 started. But I still smiled on all the pictures, I hugged all my classmates, I had dinner with my family and we all laughed.
It’s been twenty one days since this year started, and I’m dizzy. I feel like I’m in that scene on ‘Alice in Wonderland’ where she is running away from the Queen of Hearts and all the characters saying everything they ever said are floating around her on a spiral that gets crazier and crazier. And when I get them to stop I feel like when she’s wandering alone in wonderland, looking for a way out, desperate, sad. She cries.
I spend days without getting out of the house unless is completely necessary. Is just me and my laptop, lying on bad or sat on the living room. Just trying to write and figure out the next step. Because I still need to get all the degree paperwork done and that’s going take another three months. But a lot of my classmates already have jobs, they established here. And I’m applying to work as a cashier on a bakery, because I don’t want to start my career here.
The plan was getting a job at an editorial and making connections, meeting people and learning about the whole publishing world. After that, I would get my own book published and my actual dream job would start. But that’s very difficult to happen, especially since there’s nothing of editorials here, there’s only small newspapers and magazines that talk exclusively about the rich people of the town. The truth is I only know what I want but not exactly how to get there.
I am yearning to be brave and independent, but my parents have loans and bills to pay and how exactly am I supposed to leave them like that? I don’t even have enough money saved to move out without asking for heir help. That would be more loans for them. I feel lost, blue, trapped and lonely.
-
Even after all of that, there is one thing that didn’t go away when I woke up. Hope. I still have hope.
Hope that I am going to make it, even if the world receives me with a bright day or a cold night. I can make it. Hope is what has kept the humanity alive for so long. My mom says hope is the last thing you lose. Lana Del Rey says hope is a dangerous thing, but she still has it. Because what other option do we all really have?
I’m learning to be gentle with myself, with my mind. I’m hoping for the best. I’m being grateful for what I already have. I’m grateful for my comfortable bed, for my family and for my house. I’m being grateful for my laptop, for my phone and for the internet. Grateful that I still get to hang out with all my different friends every week, and that we can communicate at any time through our whatsapp groups. Grateful for everything that happened on my student days. Grateful that I still have a chance.
I’m grateful for the blue greyish light January is sending through my window, because I feel like one day I’m gonna miss it. There’ll be too many hot and busy days or too many freezing disappointing nights, and I’ll miss the stillness of this days.
I know soon everything is going to change. But I’ll be okay. It’s just another new year.