Honestly, January is probably the worst time to get your period. Also probably the worst time to find out one of your favourite celebrities has allegedly been making women feel highly uncomfortable for a number of years.
Alas this has been the start of my January. I usually feel a bit down after Christmas. Everyone does. Letting go of your last mince pie or glass of champagne and replacing it with a ballpoint pen ready for work or school or uni is always a depressing moment.
Thanks to being a full time student, my January for the last few years has consisted of a manic rush to the library in order to cram 20 pages worth of reading in order to study for an exam I may or may not have forgotten about until ten days before….
However, as a newly graduated person with no real responsibilities other than keeping my part-time job and writing a few personal statements for a potential Masters degree (eek), my Christmas was unusually peaceful.
Instead of sorting out my jumble of notes into a somewhat readable Word document, I went for a 2 hour long walk in the Irish countryside. Instead of scrunching my hands in my hair and desperately slamming my head into books in the hope that somehow the words from the page would seep into my brain via osmosis, I helped my dad go pick out a Christmas tree. Instead of yelling at my mum/dad/brother/dog/self for being too much of a distraction to my revision, I actually read something that wasn’t required of me to read….and I enjoyed it.
The January blues I experienced in previous years were mainly, I think, rooted in fear and stress over upcoming exams and deadlines. However the kind of blues I am experiencing this January come from a different kind of anxiety: what now?
Though I have given myself some semblance of structure in order to stay sane, and with hardly any financial worries to think about now that I’m living at home, the stress I am putting on myself is a more insidious one. One which stems from an anxiety that I am not doing enough, or not making the right choices, or not going fast enough or doing as much as the person next to me.
I know, of course, these anxieties are normal coming from a graduate living in London, but honestly, there are some days where I wish I could go back to school. To structure, to teachers telling you what to do, to a place where you don’t have to go out of your way to make new friends. The freedom of not being in that environment is certainly great at times. I can decide how I want to live my life and don’t have to answer to anyone if I don’t want to. But it’s also terrifying and stressful…and definitely lonely.
Maybe it’s my menstruation talking (god, I hope it is), but right now I am pretty sick of January. Let’s see if February is any better.
Queer as Yolk 