Cold Love

It always happens to me when the air gets cold.
I get nostalgic for people and places and times.
Frozen in snapshots or vignettes,
and me, certain that I'm the reason I can't have them anymore.

Why is it only Winter that sets me back and reminds me?
Why can I spend all of Spring and Summer oblivious and selfish?

But October comes, and it settles in.

The color of a fall sun reaching across Capital monuments on that incredible DC trip.
The view of the NC Mountains in a 3 person plane with a someone who would become a lifelong friend.
Sunday dinners with a family that could have been my own. He and his family are always washed in this golden warm glow of his parent's house - and the smell of baking. I would, as a rule, fall asleep on his lap while we all ended the night watching some movie.
6th and Chestnut, the first night in that house. The chill in that drafty, sparsely furnished house in the mornings, hot tea, and falling so absurdly in love with someone. Even the next winter, relishing in the success of Chicago, and dinner parties on Castle Street. No falling asleep on his lap, he'd shake me, HEY! Wake up! I whine and he waggles his eyebrows at me in glee.
New Years Eve parties after a show at Level 5 with the people I have come to love over the last 6 years.
And this last winter in New York, alone. Discovering the city I adore. Freezing, which I just hate, but so alive.

I have just realized that, with one exception, I have only ever fallen in love in Winter. The holidays depress me and intensify my nostalgia to the point where I have to escape into someone else.
That should make me look forward to this Winter. Perfect! By January, I'll be in love and I'll be blissfully happy!
But I know that's not true this year.
Too much has happened in 2012 - there is too much baggage, and it is clinging on, no end in sight of letting go. I don't know if it's because I can't or because I won't. I have loved so much, and fought so fucking hard, to the point of exhaustion. And, still loving, attempted to drink my way through to another side. Scouring for a scrap of goddamned clarity. I have let go those who love me, and who I love. Because what else could I have done?

Spring cannot come fast enough.