February is my cruellest month

Heartbreak, loss, mice and balls of frustration

I. Intrusions and irritations

I start my mornings cleaning mouse droppings off the kitchen counter. Their stubborn intrusion is driving me slowly, gently insane. 

I have a daily planner. At the top of the page, it asks me each morning, "What’s my ‘Intention For Today’?"

To just get through it. 

My lips are crusty, cracked, and bleeding. My brain is like tangled wires. My heart is a heavy ball. 

People are saying the wrong thing.

I rarely order takeaway because I’m always trying to save money, but I want a night off from dancing with the mice, so I order a pizza. The pizza arrives scrunched up in a ball. I imagine it’s been dropped on the floor. 

Still trying to not spend money, and then my kettle breaks. I ordered a new one and it has fancy features I don’t need and keeps beeping while I try and write this. 

I blame February. 

---

II. February, I don’t like you

February is a stupid month with an irregular number of days and irregular weather. I keep changing my coat. 

We can see the end of winter and that’s meant to be a good thing. Although, I can feel the pressure of summer looming. 

Last summer was wasted in stagnation. 

The rhythms which we move through seasons begin to tear us apart. On the contrast between the outside world and his despair, T.S. Eliot wrote: ‘April is the cruellest month.’ 

February is mine. For others it’s the month of love, for me, it’s the month of heartbreak. 

February is the month one year ago, I caught my now ex-boyfriend cheating. February is the month, this year, that my boyfriend who died when we were 20 years old should have turned 36. February is the month that I’m haunted by what I’ve lost: the futures I was meant to have, the lives I was hoping to have lived. It’s the month I’m reminded I’m alone. 

I go on a date with someone from a dating app and he tells me humans need eight hugs per day. The two we shared are my only hugs all week. We don’t see each other again. 

My favourite mug smashes onto the kitchen floor. A fitting end to my month of loss. 

---

III. Grief and snot

Grief is like the seasons: always changing and always coming back. 

It’s funny that grief is something that comes out of death because grief is a living thing that moves into your body, pulsating, forever. 

Some days it’s a dark and heavy ball and on others a soft glow of moonlight. 

I joined a grief circle last year and they asked what I’d say to him. ‘I’m trying my best,’ I burst through the snot in my mouth. 

My best feels average during this cruel month. 

---

IV. Yoga gave me an ending

I’m self-conscious that I’m writing about February before it’s over. Or that I’m bothering to write about it because it’s over so soon. 

There’s a discomfort in the change of seasons, the yoga teacher says. Our bodies can feel sticky as we prepare for the change. 

Hibernation is coming to an end. 

At the yoga class, we pick up and throw away imaginary balls of frustration. We push it all out and let it go. We put our hands on our hearts and are asked to send love out to someone who needs it. 

I send love to the mice. 

---

I wrote a book about grief in my twenties and The Evening Standard said: “Candid and highly readable, her book carves out an important space to talk about loss and mental health. It’s also a massively relatable story of dizzy, messy twenty-something life.”

---