Winter woes

You feel a tepid blanket of morning light gently tickle the surface of your cracked, moistureless skin, and you shudder, vigorously, underneath your covers. You rise like a sleeping giant, stretching out the battered limbs that have weathered meng shots and repeated falls on icy pathways to pull back the blinds from your window. It’s snowing.

ARGGGGLRLRLRLGHHHHHH.

It’s been a long winter.

Like every academic year before it, this one started off fine — great, actually. You were one of many eagerly anticipating the first snowfall of the season. When those pure virgin flakes eventually fell, you immediately updated your Facebook status and created a minute-long, multi-shotSnapchat story, each picture captioned with an elated “Snowwww!!!”

The endless snowfall brought you great joy – your Instagram game finally gained some momentum, and you actually gained two new followers. Win. You sang songs from “Frozen” when it was snowing, when it wasn’t snowing, in the shower, while working out and even in the corner of Tower that one time. The underlying despair of the ensuing tundra lay dormant in your unconscious mind. Sure, you kept hearing the phrase “polar vortex” but, to be honest, you never really knew what that meant. In fact, it sounded pretty cool. Thoughts of spring were buried deep under a magical layer of snow — Mother Nature was just doing her thing. Besides, who were you to question a snow day?

As holiday after holiday passed, the freezing temperatures began to lose their appeal. Sure, Christmas and New Year’s kind of depend on chilly weather to create that cozy, “Baby, it’s cold outside” vibe but as you began to leave behind your holiday spirit, you also started to question the point of winter. Other than providing a backdrop for hot chocolate, a purpose for fuzzy holiday sweaters and a reason to construct a cocoon of warm blankets, what else could the cold be good for? Whether or not you’re from meteorologically-confused New Jersey or perpetually sunny California, everyone knows that winter is only supposed to be temporary. It’s like that middle school goth phase you pretend never happened regardless of the lingering evidence on Facebook — it was fun for a while, but at some point, it had to stop. After all, the snow certainly didn’t help on Valentine’s Day, when the fact that you’re probably going to die alone only seemed more apparent in the negative 10 degree wind chill.

That night you realized that the cold really did bother you [anyway], and you began to have nightmares of this cursed winter enduring eternally. You essentially forgot what warmth (and perhaps, love itself) felt like, and you started to fear that you were turning into both a physical and figurative block of ice. The definition of “pants” stretched to its limit, as you became comfortable walking around campus in oversized hoodies paired with multiple layers of pajama bottoms. It didn’t really matter all that much anyway, since you camped out in McGraw for so long that you started to wonder whether you should be paying rent. Whether it was the random 70-degree day or that time you accidentally set your phone’s weather location to Honolulu, you were given hope that winter would end time and time again. But time and time again, this hope was stolen from you too soon.

But have faith for the end is near. Signs of an oncoming spring surge all around us. Once you rouse your mind and body from their deep hibernation, you, too, will see them. Temperatures are climbing ever so slowly; the snow is melting instead of piling up outside our doors. Just look at those tiny, green buds on the trees by the Woody Woo fountain — you can be sure those will turn into beautiful, white flowers sometime soon. You can even sense the newfound, sexually-charged energy of the squirrels that frolic around Prospect Garden. Or, just internalize the fact that it’s almost April, so it should be 80 degrees, no excuses.

Indeed, spring is fast approaching, and it’s time to gradually exchange our comfy sweatpants and Ugg[ly] boots for flowery sundresses and salmon shorts. Yes, you will soon be forced to actually care about your appearance again, which means there are only a few weeks left of eating ice cream under the covers or taking the elevator to your second-floor room. But, for now, let’s simply enjoy the last few weeks of this hellish season filled with frost, taking comfort in the fact that the warmth of spring waits just around the corner.