I've never seen the point of February. It just feels like a filler month between January and March, a drunk Old Man Winter swinging his fists and cursing the coming spring. Maybe he regrets not quite conjuring enough blizzards this season; North Carolina has yet to see one. Or maybe he's depressed about global warming. Either way, there's an edge of sadness to February wind that leaves me feeling, as Leonard Cohen put it, "cold as a new razor blade."
For me, it's often around late January when things start to go wrong in the new year. It's the month my grandfather passed away, and when my childhood guinea pig went to the great bell pepper patch in the sky. However, at least January has a point; the year has to start somewhere. But by the time February arrives, I'm done with winter, ready for things to warm up and bloom and be hopeful again. I'm also not partial to Valentine's Day, though now that it seems cool to hate it, the contrarian in me almost wishes I liked it. I realized last Friday evening that the only thing I like about this month is a February sunset. Walking up Weaver Street in Carrboro, I saw rose and purple spilling through cracked clouds and spindly trees. It made the sky look raw and honest, and the buildings blush.
I looked down and saw the buttons on my coat hanging on by their worn threads, ready to drop off one by one like failed New Year's resolutions. The thought of failed resolutions led me to think about regret, and what makes it different from plain sadness. I'm beginning to wonder if regret is the most painful emotion in existence. It's one thing to experience sadness or loss, but also rest assured that you did everything you could to prevent it. For instance, it's easier to be rejected when you know you at least had the courage to tell someone you loved them. However, it's another thing when you're always wondering about what you could've done instead, or constantly replaying your mistakes in your mind. Regret is sadness with teeth. It's Ingmar Bergman and Werner Herzog sitting in their underwear, eating soggy corn flakes in an arctic cabin and listening to Nick Cave (I really, really wanted to make a cartoon of this, but my drawing skills just aren't there yet).
In a way, I think my desire to write is partially born of regret. My regrets often involve miscommunication, things I wish I would've said, not said, or said differently. I have a lot of trouble saying what I mean in person, but writing allows me to always articulate exactly what I think and feel, exactly how I want. It's a window to the real me. In fiction, I can create entire worlds with the sole purpose of expressing what I'm trying to say, every scenic detail and character gesture shining a light on my ideas. It makes writing a wonderfully freeing medium, this ability to reveal what so often gets lost in translation between thought and speech. In face-to-face communication, it's so easy for simple statements like "I love you," "I'm angry with you," "You're beautiful," "I appreciate you," or "Help me understand you" to get tangled in missed chances, misunderstandings, and poorly chosen words.
As I finish this post, I notice the world outside has thawed just a little, and small, green promises dot the branches of a few trees in my yard--change is coming. I'm listening to the song "Severance" by Dead Can Dance, and there's a great line in it that goes: "When all the leaves have fallen and turned to dust, will we remain entrenched within our ways?" I pray that, at the end of this new year, the answer is "no."
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