January has no atmosphere.
That’s the problem with it.
December is loud and stupid and overlit. Even when it’s stressful, it has a shape. There are things to do. Things to survive. You can blame the month for how you feel.
January just sits there.
The tree is gone. The glitter is still somehow everywhere, but now it looks less festive and more like evidence. The kids are back at school. The emails have returned to their usual tone of mild threat.
“Reminder: PE kit.”
“Reminder: Book day is next week.”
“Reminder: You are already behind.”
The house feels stripped back. Not clean, just… undecorated. Like life has gone back to its default settings.
The kids don’t talk about Christmas anymore.
That part always surprises me.
It was everything, and then it’s nothing. A few broken chocolates at the back of the cupboard. A new toy already missing a piece. A vague memory of wrapping paper and noise.
Now it’s homework and hair brushing and trying to find a clean jumper that doesn’t feel wrong.
I found a chocolate coin in a coat pocket the other day.
Gold foil, slightly melted.
It shouldn’t have made me feel anything. It was just a coin. Just sugar. Just something left behind.
But I stood there holding it, and I felt that strange January drop. The comedown. The quiet after the performance.
I ate it anyway, standing up, because that is apparently how I consume most of my emotions now.
Co-parenting in January is its own thing.
In December there’s at least a script. Christmas Eve. Christmas Day. The agreed handovers. The polite texts with too many exclamation marks.
Hope you all had a lovely day!
January is just… logistics again.
Who’s got them Friday.
Who’s doing the dentist.
Who forgot the reading book.
The calendar blocks go back to being ordinary colours instead of holiday exceptions.
The kids move between houses with less ceremony. More routine. Like they’ve already adjusted and I’m the one still catching up.
One of them asked me last week what we’re doing for half term.
I stared at them like they’d asked what we’re doing for the year 2047.
Half term.
Already.
Life doesn’t pause. It just reloads.
There’s a particular kind of tired that comes in January.
Not the tired of late nights or big events. Just the tired of repetition. Lunchboxes. Lost socks. The same argument about the same toothpaste cap.
Even the dating part of my life, such as it is, feels quieter in January.
There’s no drama.
Just silence.
The kind of silence that isn’t romantic or mysterious, it’s just… absence.
I checked my phone the other night without thinking. Nothing. Of course nothing. Then I felt stupid for even looking, like I’d briefly forgotten what my life actually looks like.
Mostly it looks like the kitchen.
Mostly it looks like someone needing something.
Mostly it looks like me doing the same things over and over and pretending I’m not counting the weeks until spring.
The kids are fine, by the way.
They always are, in the way children are. They bounce back. They complain about school dinners. They laugh at something ridiculous. They move on.
It’s me who lingers.
Me who notices the lack of lights.
Me who feels the emptiness of the month.
January is just parenting with no decorations.
No buffer.
No sparkle.
Just the ordinary work of loving them and getting through the days and trying to remember that this, too, is part of it.
Not the highlight reel.
Just the stretch of road in between.
And it’s long.
But we’re on it.
All of us.