The Weather Is Amazing, Isn't It?

I grew up in a coastal city in the tropics, so the only seasons I have ever known are hot, hotter, hottest, and cyclone season. I got to Stockholm in August, much like every new student here, and the weather was initially a pleasant change. I fell in love with it. It was cool enough for me to wear light jackets and try out new ideas of fashion that I didn’t have the option of trying before. I really thought summer was the best season, and I was sad I came to the end of it.

Then came autumn (fall, for our American readers, tch tch) – surreal. I have no other words to describe how great it all was. I saw people on Instagram reels joke about the season’s arrival, chasing away all depression like it is nothing, but trust me when I say that was true in my case. At least the first two weeks were. The leaves turned a beautiful yellow; it was sweater and trenchcoat weather. The wind just hit the right way, and the sky was the perfect scenery to watch, man! But why did it have just to leave me so soon? The whole autumn season was like a tease. It suddenly was too cold for me to consider it autumn, and the sun stopped showing itself in the sky, and as a cherry on the cake, daylight savings time was gone.

I don’t care if it was still autumn on paper, but to me, it was as good as winter. The supreme lack of sun was getting to me, so I ran to the pharmacist to get my replacement for the sun – Vitamin D supplements. I had taken the reliability of looking at the sky before 6 pm and being able to see the sun there all through the year for granted when I was back home, and Swedish “autumn” taught me my lesson.

As if this wasn’t bad enough on its own, winter came soon after. The snow was obviously very pretty, making the place look like a fairy tale, but it is simply too cold for me to enjoy the scenery now. To add to all these problems, I had to be that kind of person with not an ounce of ability to balance myself in terrain I am not used to. So, I slip about 249,834 times every day that I decide to step out of my home. And remember how I loved getting to wear jackets in the golden weeks of the short-lived autumn? Yeah, that is no longer fun for me in winter. I am forced to zip my jacket up fully and wear no shoes other than my snow boots, which are extremely unfashionable (obviously because that is all I can afford on a student budget, the discount boots in Decathlon).

I am someone who loves to complain about things I don’t like (like it wasn’t obvious so far, right?). And I have this friend who tries to look at the bright side of everything, which annoys me to no end. She keeps saying that she will tell herself that she loves this weather until she actually does. Fake it till you make it, or whatever that is. But try to see it from my perspective – you are in the middle of your deep rant about the snow getting on your spectacles and into your mouth uncontrollably and about how your phone keeps getting too cold for the SIM card to be recognised, and then you hear “The weather is amazing, no?” You understand why I sometimes want to just send a figurative slap across my friend’s face, right? This is almost as annoying as the Swedes saying that there is no such thing as bad weather; there is only bad clothing. Like, come on. Do you not see the slippery mess making people fall in all directions around you? Do you not feel the lack of colour and the absence of sun for weeks on end?

Maybe a few years in Scandinavia will get me accustomed to this god-awful season we call winter, but I am unsure if I am so eager to find out. Please get me back to summer and autumn already, I beg you! This is where my rant ends for now. Thanks for attending my TED talk. I’ll see you soon with a rant about yet another thing!