The February Blahs

It's usually 28 days long. It has a long weekend. It has Valentine's Day. So why is the month of February such a misery?

As January left us, and with it exams, the start of a bright new semester loomed. I use "loomed" because, even though I believed only brightness could follow bitter January, "overarching melancholy" instead fills the emptiness (as a friend put it melodramatically). But why melancholy, in this Yard so coveted and new dining hall so extravagant?

Contemplation and self-inspection have filled the days that work has been unable to, and as a result, I have retired to a sullen life of beer and darts. While these vices are not inherently loathsome, they begin to lose their study-break effect after tens of hours. But what is a person to do? In order to regain the carefree spirit that once filled me with the ability to moderate my beer and darts, I must expel the murky residue of February, since March is now here.

The obvious problem with February is that it reminds us that winter is alive and well while simultaneously giving hope that spring will one day come. I consult my computer weather program each day: ("35 to 40 with scattered rains in the early morning, turning to possible showers in the mid-afternoon. Tonight, over-cast with 70 percent chance of rains"), only to wish I went to school with my cousin at Emory. He let me know the other day that he was enjoying a cold beverage on his sunny, 75-degree porch. My only compensation was that he didn't have a dartboard.

Weather is only the icing on the not-so tasty cake. This month has been one full of family stress, lack-of-girl-friend woes and a general feeling of blah. To elaborate slightly more on "blah": February has sucked the emotion from my soul.

Keeping myself busy is not the problem; it is more that indifference and self-contemplation have become my favorite states of mind. I have begun to wonder where the rest of my life is going and what I am doing inside these Crimson gates, and when that isn't doing it, I have blocking madness to consider. But it isn't the tangible problems that are making February icky. Instead, I feel that a certain futility has overshadowed the repetitiveness of college life, even after only one semester here. Weeks elapse, and besides the reading selections, nothing changes very much. Weekday: class, Annenberg, darts, work, coffee, Annenberg, work, darts, sleep. Weekend: beer, darts.

Last weekend, I tried to escape February. I went to Chinatown for the first time, and I also walked around Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market for the first time in years. Doing something new invigorated me, but when I re-entered the Yard, it was unmistakably February again. Part of February's horror is that the month disguises itself. It dresses up in the form of a holiday for lovers (one that doesn't achieve its full effect if you pass it in Lamont, I might add) and a celebration of two great presidents. Most misleading of all, it contains the fewest number of days of any month.

Emotion, as I said, has been usurped from me. I used to be someone who thrived on sensitivity, who liked telling people how I was feeling, but letting go and opening up to people has become impossible, since I am too busy wallowing in feelings of inadequacy. For example, I have seen many amazing performances this month by fellow students; at first they make me feel as if I shouldn't have given up those saxophone lessons--until I remember that beyond reading sheet music, I am musically inept. While I wonder what I am good at, I pitch a score of 118 (triple 20, double 20 and single 18). But then I realize that darts will only get me so far.

As this article comes to a close, I look back and see that I have done a poor job of relating my inner turmoil to you, the reader. I hope you have been able to fill in the blanks with your own feelings of blah that February has given you, or else you might think I'm crazy. Either way, through the writing of this piece, I have come to a pleasant realization: Maybe February's purpose is to make us check out ourselves in the mirror and question the lives that we lead.

The rain and dreariness have put clouds on blithe spirits, but maybe this is Mother Nature's way of telling us that perpetual peaches and cream is not healthy. February is gone, and as March comes in, it is full of the lion's emotion. Darts and beer lie ahead, but in moderation. An end is in sight; a cathartic 29 days have passed, and the storm is over.

Daniel M. Suleiman '99 plans to spend today reveling in the glory of March.