The light is back, and apparently so am I

Winter doesn’t break me, but it does make my life smaller. I move less, want less, reach for less. Then the days lengthen, the air softens, and something in me loosens. If you’ve ever noticed your own seasonal mood shifts in midlife, this is what that feels like for me. I become easier to find.

Something has changed.

I’m waking up earlier, and for once it has nothing to do with an alarm. There’s actual light coming through the window.

The birds in our trees have also apparently received the memo. They are obnoxiously loud in the morning, carrying on as though they have somewhere very important to be.

And weirdly, I don’t mind.

I open the curtains. I open the windows. I let the morning in.

The air doesn’t feel hostile anymore.

It’s one of those small changes you barely notice until you realise you’ve been noticing them all week.

I want to go outside.

I want to walk somewhere rather than simply get from A to B. I want to sit outside in the sun with a coffee. I want to feel the warmth on my skin. I want to get moving.

I’ve started thinking about swimming again.

Not the pool. The salt water.

Bare feet. Cold water. The beach. That particular feeling of coming home from a swim with wet hair and absolutely no interest in putting proper clothes back on.

I’m ready for it.

Apparently, I’m also ready for salad.

There have been so many soups.

So. Many. Soups.

I love soup. Winter food has its own kind of comfort. There is something deeply satisfying about a bowl of something hot while the weather outside is doing its worst.

But after months of soup, I am ready for something crisp and green.

I am ready to sit outside for dinner. I am ready for barbecues and wine and salads and sunsets. I am ready to go sailing on the boat. I am ready to wander around barefoot. I am ready to spring clean the house, which is possibly the clearest evidence yet that something has happened to me.

Because winter does something subtle to my life. It makes it smaller.

Not necessarily worse — there are good things about the smaller version. Slow mornings, warm houses, couches and books and soup. But there’s also a lot of time inside, under the reverse-cycle air conditioner, telling myself whatever I need can probably wait until tomorrow because tomorrow might be warmer.

Winter doesn’t exactly energise me. It contracts things a little.

And I don’t think I realised quite how much that affected me. Until now.

Because suddenly the days are getting longer and warmer, and something in me seems to have loosened.

I want to move. I want to be outside. I want to look after myself properly again.

I want to swim. I want to sit on the deck with a coffee. I want to throw open the big bifold doors and let the dining room become half inside, half outside. I want to stay out until the sun goes down.

I want to do things.

And somewhere in the middle of all this, I have had the oddest little realisation:

Oh. There I am.

I haven’t had a breakthrough. I haven’t discovered a new system for living. I haven’t suddenly become one of those people who leaps out of bed at 5am to meditate while the kettle boils and the sun rises over an inspirational mountain range.

I just feel better.

Maybe I’m a reverse vampire. Give me enough sunlight and apparently I become interested in exercise, swimming, spring cleaning and shaving my legs.

Things are clearly getting serious.

Which has left me turning something over: how much of what we feel is actually us, and how much is the world around us?

I’m not suggesting sunlight is the answer to everything. Life is considerably more complicated than that. But our bodies and brains don’t exist separately from our surroundings.

Light matters. Temperature matters. Fresh air matters. Being outside matters. So does having somewhere pleasant to sit with a coffee on a Saturday morning.

And maybe sometimes we don’t notice the effect of our environment until it changes.

For months, I have been living in the winter version of my life. And now, almost without asking permission, I’m beginning to reach for the summer one.

I’m not sure I’ve changed.

I think I’ve just become easier to find.

The light is back.

And apparently, so am I.