Your breath materializes in the air when you breathe out, clinging together in a white puff before disappearing. A certain heaviness settles around your shoulders while you sit alone in that small park near your neighborhood. It's not an onerous feeling, but rather one of nostalgia — a feeling you've come to both hate and accept. That feeling takes you back to those old times when you could think of nothing but the mirth that reverberated in a room full of warmth.

You smile despite your situation, letting out a soft chuckle into the winter's air. It's time you headed on back to the empty place you call home and prepare yourself for the morning after when children tear open their wrapped presents and family come together to celebrate Christmas Day.

Sliding off the wooden bench you're sitting on, you stuff your hands into the pocket of your jeans and return home, listening to the crunching of snow beneath your boots. You close your eyes while continuing on your way, letting your feet steer you home without using your sight. Late December is quite cold this year, biting your bare cheeks to a rosy color and numbing your body through the layers of clothing you were sure to put on that morning.

As your thoughts take you elsewhere, you finally open your eyes to face your front door. You fish out your keys and fit it into the lock before turning and hearing that familiar click of passage. Pushing open the door, you enter before shutting it behind you. The entryway is dark, almost unwelcoming, but you're used to it to the point that you don't even need to turn on the lights to make your way past the kitchen and to your room.

Sighing, you collapse onto your bed, not bothering to undo your scarf or take off your coat. Your boots are still on, and there's no doubt a track of muddy snow has made its way throughout the hardwood floors of your house, but you know it's an easy job of cleaning it come morning, making it seem like you never dirtied it in the first place.

You turn to your side and lie there for a few seconds, mind devoid of anything.

And then the thoughts come.

It's like someone has plugged a cord into your head and clicked the download button, occupying your mind with all the possible ideas it could ever hold, and it doesn't ever stop that easily. You can't just try to sleep it off or try doing schoolwork to take your mind off of those ideas. You can't just simply reach in and flick off the switch in your brain to make it stop thinking. It's almost like your brain is its own entity, apart from your body.

It's reminding you about the general consensus of winter.

Winter is that season that seems to freeze everything in its frosty embrace. It's the season that doesn't let the living flourish in the frozen ground, and it's that season that so many authors allude to when describing a particular melancholy scene in their work.

But does winter have to hold that sort of meaning? Does winter have to always symbolize the depression that settles onto someone like a fresh blanket of snow after a night of flurries?

You turn, facing the plain ceiling of your bedroom and stare at it like the whiteness could take you to another place — another time where the color of a room didn't matter because the people within it were the ones who painted colors onto walls with their laughter.

For a moment, you forget about the cold while you think about the fondness of the memory.

You're thankful for what winter can bring because it's this time of the year when the season can remind you of how the warmth of family and friends can cast away the coldness and instead immerse you into love. The corners of your mouth curl upward at the cheesy thought, but you accept it anyway. What more could you compare with winter to create a stark contrast?

It's winter and yet... you've never felt warmer in your life.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.