A Long December

Every year around the beginning of December, before the Christmas season begins and the long, dreary wintery season arrives, I listen to this song (Counting Crows - A Long December) and really resonate with the lyrics. As the last few years of my life have been especially tough, every year I wish for the new year to be better than the last... This is a song that has got me through the loneliest of nights and some of the darkest of hours as I crammed through fall term final exams during undergrad and muddled through seasonal blues. This year I can relate to this song more than ever before, as I struggle to get through one of the most difficult times in my life - my current hospital placement, which has been the BANE of my existence and has really affected every area of my life. I have bolded the lyrics that speak most to me at this moment in time: 

A long December and there's reason to believe

Maybe this year will be better than the last

I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leaving

Oh the days go by so fast

And it's one more day up in the canyons

And it's one more night in Hollywood

If you think that I could be forgiven

I wish you would

The smell of hospitals in winter

And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls

All at once you look across a crowded room

To see the way that light attaches to a girl

And it's one more day up in the canyons

And it's one more night in Hollywood

If you think you might come to California

I think you should

Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after 2 a.m.

And talked a little while about the year

I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower

Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe

Maybe this year will be better than the last

I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself

To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it's one more day up in the canyon

And it's one more night in Hollywood

It's been so long since I've seen the ocean

I guess I should