Decembers of our Life.

If I could be a month I would Love to be DECEMBER. There is something oddly comforting bittersweet feeling of this month that I am addicted to. It’s the joy of birthday celebrations preceding Christmas nights preceding New year fun. It’s hugging your mom tight in the rikshaw, or hiding in her saree while returning from the midnight mass. Its fairy lit nights, and house turned into fairy tale castle or wondering what if Santa did come. It’s also as you grow up, the pain of knowing Santa was just a story, and even worse when you lose the man who was your santa all life. And spending the month alone, yet kindled. From day 1 every year I am in total “December Mode”.

Almost every year, something about December inspires me. This year I was reflecting on what I really love so much of this month, the brief span of the cheerless sun, or the evening like afternoons, perhaps the longer nights, when the cold within finally matches the cold without, like you are one with the month, and all about it, like there is no hiding. You can be you. I don’t know when it was created, but the big space in my heart gets cozy in this month, I put up the tree of hope, and decorate it with my experiences, and the wreath of my eternal existence, reminds me of the temporary nature of my feelings. Bringing hope of everlasting future that is ahead. And then in the broken crib of my conscience, I prepare to welcome love, as he is born, tiny and so pure. And the bright star of realization shows me the way. Last month, all that you did in the year and before, time to make peace with it. Make peace with yourself. And set on a new journey, which will also have a December, and another and another; until you could embrace them all and cross over.

Recently a concerning number of clients who I try to serve, are struggling with relationship issues or some form of sadness. Being an Empath, I unrestrictedly picked up on their feelings and my “December mode” was switched on almost 2 months ago. I felt a lot of sadness, frustration and some kind of an urgent desperation to be loved, rejection of the idea of being rejected. So much Denial. It made me thinking, summers give you freedom, we all want it, spring brings new hope, we wait for it, monsoon nourishes you, and autumn will take your pain away. But Winter, this bleak December is simply to be embraced, it lets you be you, cold or warm, it’s just there frozen, all you need to do is feel it, and just be, and then you can begin new.

I have tried fighting many Decembers too, who wants the pain, the endings an all that. But when I made peace with it, I was kindled. Why deny or fight it? Why not just embrace it and cuddle in it. Hold yourself, and hold it tight and just be.

December drops no weak, relenting tear,
By our fond Summer sympathies ensnared, Nor from the perfect circle of the year Can even Winter’s crystal gems be spared. – Christopher Pearce Cranch