letter to winter

Dear Winter,

I hate you. I think you suck, but not for the reasons you expect. I can bear the snow and the bad weather. It is something that I have come to understand and I can take precautions to make these things manageable. I can take a vacation day when you make the roads too treacherous to navigate and I can wear layer upon layer of clothing, turning me into an asexually rounded yeti. At least these things have advantages: I can stay home from work or avoid being hit on by unwanted suitors.

Rather, I hate you because of the way you make me feel. You make me numb in mind and body. You are accompanied by grey skies and gloom. You are as temperamental as a schizophrenic: one minute spewing snow from your steely clouds, the next firing lightning bolts and ice down from the heavens. If I were to admire anyone for anything, it would be for consistency in their work...of this you exhibit nothing but inconsistency. I hate that the meteorologists are incompetent at predicting your "episodes" and that there is no warning for your outbursts. You make me shiver with a death-like coldness that begins in the tip of my nose and runs through my body with the intensity of the first teenage "love" pangs. You make my boyfriend contort his body into a protective stance each time I come near him with my freezing "ice claws." You make me wish I hadn't been ordered to give up caffeine, and thus give up coffee and hot chocolate that used to warm my numbness. You make my bank account shrivel, but stretch at the same time, because of increasing fuel costs both for my car and to heat my house. You make the dog stand as though she were a tripod while trying to relieve herself in the bitter temperatures. You make me wish for warmer climates and a work-from-home job allowing me to be a shut-in and avoid you altogether. You make me hate the poets who have thought you worthy of putting pen to paper, the photographers who capture the first frost-covered mornings before the weight of your unsteady yet unrelenting fist has smashed upon the world, crushing out all hope and happiness. You make me curse the winter sport fanatics for wishing you would last longer, thus canceling out my own wishes that you'll pack up your shit and leave already. You make me yearn for spring, despite the odor of cow feces that will undoubtedly fill the air. You make me spend my time wishing for the future instead of enjoying the present, thus stealing precious time from my life (all the while realizing that this act is my own damned fault, for which I hate you even more).

Did I mention that I hate you, Winter. I do. From the bottom of my frozen, clicking heart.

Sincerely,
Trish T.