Astrologically speaking, I am a bundle of opposites. I was born literally on the cusp of Leo and Cancer. Leo represents the Sun in all its fabulous heat and radiance, the giver of life and a bit dangerous in its intensity, and Cancer represents the Moon, shifting the moods around like ocean tides, giving a soft silver glow to an otherwise devastating darkness.

One is Fire, sending heat and flames skyward, consuming all it touches and one is Water, tempering the sparks and making them sizzle and steam, rejuvenating all that has been parched. One is outgoing, dominant and extroverted and one is shy, quiet and introverted. One is light and warmth; the other is dark and mysterious. A person can’t really get more opposite than all that.

It really messes with me in the winter however, because if you throw in a bit of “Seasonal Affective Disorder” and the natural slowing down of work that happens every year at this time, well, let’s just say I either need to be left alone to sleep until spring or be grabbed by friends and taken to a party. There is no in between.

Winter to me is like a figurative straight jacket, swaddled in a cozy self imposed lonely blanket unable to move, or a fountain slowly freezing in its glorious fan of water spray, enclosing me like a glass statue, struggling, wanting heat and movement to break me free of the ice as it forms over me.

Knowing there is a current running strong below and inside somewhere I have the inevitable feeling that I will nonetheless be caught in the freezing layers soon enough and yet at the same time, I want to give in to it, to harden a bit. It forces me to see what lies inside. I dream, I sleep and I wait for a new energy to break me out of my glass prison, refreshed, when the sun comes back to warm my soul.

Some people would say I am depressed. I very well could be, but I look at it more as a ‘Deep Rest.’ Like a plant that has receded from its exceptional summer splendor and goes back down into the Earth to rest and rejuvenate itself for the following summer show, I too feel the tug of being dormant for a little while. I know today I feel this way but the sun in my heart will shine tomorrow. I am completely myself in my moodiness, whether I like it or not.

Winter makes me tense. I feel it in my body, in my mind and in my heart, but I also know that without it I would not feel the exhilarated release that a spring bird singing after a thaw or a bloom of a small flower peeking out of snow brings me in its own slow time.

As much as I feel the urge to hibernate, life always demands the opposite.

The Cancer in me wants to stay in my shell and come out when it feels safe and the warm tides flow once more over the shore, but the Leo in me calls for perspective, perseverance and it challenges me to keep moving forward, even as if I feel I am swimming through quicksand or thick honey. In times like this, I feel the need to stop doing anything that expels what little energy I have left, but what I know I really must to do is push beyond the limits what I think I don’t want and get to the place where I really do want to be, which is happy and strong and alive.

So, I will dive in to my chores, put some music on and clean up all that is stagnant and dusty from 2012, put on warm clothes and walk the dog in the crisp cold air.

I suppose sometimes I try really hard to be depressed and it works for a time, but after a while it gets pretty boring and I just want to throw a party after all.