december - on learning

I’m writing as I sip on a strong latte at 1369 Coffee Shop in Central Square, admiring the snow fall outside and feeling the shock of the cold air each time the door opens and closes.

As frigid temperatures have slid into the Northeast over the past month, life has felt numbed. A physical numbness spread from my nose to my chin, as I brave the headwinds on Comm Ave during my walks home from work. A mental numbness burrowed behind my eyes, as I type run-on sentences with disappointment that my writing skills have atrophied. A spiritual numbness sprawled across my chest, as I sit on my meditation cushion searching for a connection with myself that I can no longer access.

This morning, as I peer at the glowing faces filling the coffee shop and scan the community board that showcases hundreds of local events and support groups and services, I feel a familiar sadness: a grief for college.

It’s been two and a half years since we graduated, and while I long ago accepted the reality that I’m a working adult who will likely not go back to school, this winter has brought a new wave of nostalgia for the time I was a student. 

I miss being forced to read essays I never would have read on my own, and I miss absorbing my professors’ and classmates’ interpretations of those essays that I never would have reached on my own. I miss feeling a part of a group that extends beyond a Teams chat, and I miss being within an organization whose goals reach beyond beating the competition to make more money.

Above all else, I miss our writing class, where our conversations and connections felt raw, real, and human. 

I was always learning, my mind moving too fast to ever let the chill air numb it.

The solution to this, I know, is to find new ways in my adulthood to learn. To keep reading essays and wander down rabbit holes on Reddit and Wikipedia to consume other people’s literary interpretations. To take cooking classes and document my culinary creations. To try new crafts and remind myself that the process is far more important than the outcome. And above all else, to keep writing and push past my anxieties that the words I puzzle together are not worthy of someone else’s time.

I have to keep moving, just as I do under Comm Ave’s winter lights on my walks home. And now, after finally writing a blog post for the first time in nearly a year, I have to leave this coffee shop. The door keeps opening and closing, the Arctic gusts shocking me every time. I’ve finished my coffee, and my toes are cold.