I am sure I had a head full of deep thoughts earlier today, but they aren’t here now, so you will have to forgive me if tonight’s entry is a tad pedestrian.

Anyhoo, for the record, actual winter is happening here in the GVRD. Snow on the ground, cold outside, road salt on the sidewalks (thank god), the whole schmeer. Things are getting very seasonal^[1] around here. And I am not sure how I feel about it.

Obviously, in an immediate sensory sense, it kind of sucks. My first day out in the cold air was extremely painful because my lungs are not used to it any more and so they complained mightily with every breath.

Plus, my gloves are not warm enough for this shit. So my hands are cold when I am getting to school and back as well.

So if you polled my senses, they would, as one, say FUCK WINTER.

But we are more than our senses, and part of me is kind of digging it, especially now that I have adjusted to it and so it hurts a heck of a lot less.

The cold weather mode of my metabolism is now fully engaged and my body is burning calories for warmth. That’s something that does not happen when the temperature is above freezing. But now that it’s proper cold like a proper winter, I heat myself quite efficiently. And so far, no overheating (SFX : knock on wood).

Last night when I was walking home from the Skytrain, I felt almost cozy. And that opened the door for a big ol’ nostalgia flood.

After all, for around 25 years of my life (including my entire childhood), this kind of winter was the norm for me. I have decades of memories of what I continue to insist is “real winter”, and most of them are from my younger days back when I lived in good ol’ Summerside, Prince Edward Island.

And gosh darn it, I miss that sleepy little burg sometimes. Nostalgia does that to a person, and no season is more nostalgic than the Christmas season. I have tried, for no sane reason, to resist nostalgia’s attempts to make bad times seem good, because as far as I was concerned, that made nostalgia a liar and I wanted to preserve the truth.

But truth and nostalgia don’t have to be at odds with one another. I can preserve the memory of how I felt as a child and all the terrible things that happened to my little sad self in those times without necessarily denying myself the pleasure of remembering them. After all, no time of life is all good or all bad, and it is not like I am in danger of suddenly deciding that I had a magical childhood filled with wonder and joy.

But it’s even bigger deal than that. I honestly think that my bizarre anti-nostalgia stance might well be interfering with my ability to truly put my past behind me. The human mind is not supposed to keep past trauma “new in package” fresh. We are supposed to process these things and get over them.  Interfering with that process by following the intellectual urge to keep one’s knowledge as accurate as possible is inviting disaster.

So much of what is wrong in my head is a result of some decision I made so long ago that I barely even remember it (if that) that presumably seemed like a good idea when I was young and stupid.

I wonder if that is what Asperger’s is like. And if I am on “the spectrum”.

I think I probably am, but at a level far, far below diagnosis. Perhaps all nerds would test positive for it at that kind of level. I have certainly suffered because of my lack of social awareness and inability to read a situation right.

There has to be a way to fix that. To not just teach us socially inept people to be more ept, but to activate the part of the mind that acquires social skills in the first place and feed the right social information into it.

This would probably not be a pleasant process. But if you could pull it off, it could give a whole new lease on life to a lot of people by balancing out their over-intellectual minds.

Wait, what the fuck was I talking about originally? Oh yeah, local conditions.

So my feelings about this spate of actual winter are decidedly mixed. Part of me really, really hopes this shit ends soon and we get a normal (for the GVRD) wet Xmas because that is easier to deal with than snow, ice, and so on.

But a slightly bigger part of me is just fine with this because not only is it seasonally appropriate, and not only is it nostalgic, but to a deep and long forgotten part of me that I thought had died a long time ago, it feels “right”.

This is what December is supposed to be like.  At least until Xmas or New Year’s Day.

Come Boxing Day, this shit can be kicked to the curb with all available force. Xmas is lovely but the rest of winter sucks donkey taint and I can happily do without it.

Especially February. Man, fuck winter in February. Winter can make February seem like the longest month. All the leftover cheer from the Holidays is gone and all you have before you is 28 or 29 days of sheer miserable drudgery. It’s such a drag.

So you hear (read) that, Xmas weather? Dec 26 your ass better be out of here or we will have to take stronger measures.

Jan. 2 at the latest.

And the best of this lousy fucking year : I won’t be spending Xmas alone this year. I have someone who is coming to see me. And I can’t wait.

Those of you who know me personally know who I mean. I haven’t talked about him here because part of me is afraid to wake up from this lovely dream I am having.

But some day soon, I will tell you all about him.

And there is one thing you know for sure.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.