Jaredbiz.Blog

Melancholy Months (a quiet comeback poem)

October always tricks me.

It arrives golden and crisp,
air that feels clean in your lungs,
leaves surrendering beautifully,
pumpkin-scented optimism convincing you
that change can be aesthetic.

And then it deepens.

It always deepens.

By November the light disappears earlier than I am ready for.
The sky hangs lower,
as if even it is tired of holding itself up.
Somewhere between the first fallen leaf
and my least favorite holiday, New Year’s,
I begin to thin out.

Not dramatically.
Not in a way that alarms anyone.

I just fade at the edges.

First-year teaching.
Second year of grad school.
Student teaching hours that stretch into evenings.
CalTPAs whispering “revise” at 1 a.m.
Travel squeezed between responsibilities because ambition refuses to sit still.
Managing 35 sixth graders every single day,
brilliant, loud, chaotic, loving,
needing something from me constantly.

Layer it all like coats in winter.

At some point
you stop feeling warm
and start feeling heavy.

And I crashed.

Not in a dramatic way.
No breakdown in the middle of class.
No grand speech about how I couldn’t do it anymore.

I crashed quietly.

Unsustainable, painful exhaustion.
The kind that seeps into your bones.
The kind that changes your personality.
The kind that makes you look at yourself and think,
who is this?

I became a messy homebody.

The opposite of the Jared who four years ago traveled alone through North Africa and Europe,
wandering foreign streets at midnight,
journaling in cafés,
chasing trains without knowing where they would lead.

That version of me felt expansive.
Alive.
Curious.

This version
canceled plans.
Ordered takeout.
Slept through alarms.
Lived in survival mode.

Somewhere along the way I decided I would make myself last.

I convinced myself that if I just worked harder,
stayed later,
graded faster,
said yes more often,
I would eventually earn rest.

As if exhaustion were proof that I cared enough.

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t just mental.

My body fell apart.
Flu.
Back-to-back colds.
A cough that refuses to leave.
Tissues in every jacket pocket.
I am still blowing my nose as I write this.

My immune system gave up before I did.

And grief slipped in too.

There was one moment in that stormy stretch when I realized how deep I had sunk.

Thanksgiving.

I went home alone for the week.
Just me and my parents.
A few best friends.
Family.
Long quiet mornings.
The best taco truck in the world in the Ace Hardware parking lot,
unchanged, steady, waiting.

And of course, Day-O.

There was something grounding about that week.

No lesson plans.
No notifications.
No commentary running in the background of my brain.

Just the smell of my childhood home.
My mom’s voice echoing down the hallway as she sings to her kitten,
soft and off-key and completely unbothered by who can hear.
The way her voice fills the house like it always has.

My dad knocking on my door too early in the morning,
not even pretending to wait,
just excited to say hello,
like an eager kid on Christmas
who cannot believe everyone is still asleep.

That kind of love.
Loud.
Unfiltered.
Certain.

I slept like someone who had been running for months.
I ate without multitasking.
I drove past old landmarks and felt the ache of remembering versions of myself that weren’t this tired.

When you finally stop moving,
you feel everything.

That week didn’t fix me.

But it was a pause.

And sometimes a pause
is enough to remind you
that you are still there.

I am still learning not to romanticize burnout.
Still learning that my worth is not measured by how exhausted I am.
Still learning that ambition without limits turns into self-abandonment.

I don’t want to only feel alive in airports
or foreign countries
or curated highlights.

I want to feel alive in my own house.
In my own winter.
In my own body.

October through New Year’s may always carry a heaviness.
Shorter days.
Longer lists.
The pressure to reflect and reinvent.

But maybe next year
I will notice sooner when I am fading.

Maybe next year
I will rest before I break.

Even the capable ones need rest.
Even the driven ones.

Even me.