Spring.
At the beginning of this week, I hate everything I write. I want to trash it all. I want to trash the world. In the middle of this week, I take a walk and everything feels different. My legs hurt but the sun is shining and I feel renewed. I feel better but it doesn’t last. That is a big theme of this week: I feel better but it doesn’t last.
Still, things are blooming but everything inside me feels dead. The flowers bloom but my father is still in the ground. The sun is shining but there is nothing to see in all this brightness. In this open air, there is nothing good here. I guess I mean there is nothing new here. There is nothing better.
March is a placeholder month and April is Meredith’s birthday and May is her death day and my eyes are stinging with anticipatory grief. March is almost over and I feel like a tulip bud, unmoving, unblooming; just waiting. I am not a creature of change but I do not know how to relax, either. I do not thrive in either. I have never been taught how to thrive.
I have never been taught how to bloom. This sounds silly, I know. I think most flowers do not have to be taught how to bloom. I think I have been taught not to. When I am about to bloom, the universe has cut off my head. I try and try again and the universe tells me that I belong underground. I refuse to try to bloom again. I refuse to have be beheaded again.
Still, I am watered and I am surrounded by other, blooming flowers, until I am ready. I am being faced towards the sunlight. I do not wait out these days alone. The unknown is not a place I walk into alone. To bloom in a new area, you need extra care. I am taking my time. I am asking for extra care. I am looking at how the sun hits the water. I am trying to see the good in the world. Even though it doesn’t make the bad go away, I am trying to see the good.
The good is this - I meet a kid named Messiah. We share a birthday month and he shares his fruit snacks with me and I think he is the most aptly named kid I have ever met.
I go to the bar for a beer with my roommate and my cousin. I forget my ID but I show my vaccine card and it works somehow. I sit outside and bathe in the sun and take pictures and watch a dog named Goose bark at everyone to pet him.
I go for a walk and see that there are flowers blooming on the trees.
I meet a dog with eyes beyond his years and love beyond what he can give me with his paws.
My cousin turns fourteen. It is so scary being young in a world that wants you to already be whole, and I would fight this big scary world for them without blinking.
On Monday, we have cupcakes at work for a birthday. I have two in secret.
It is hard to even count the good things. It is hard to see the good right now. I know no one wants to hear that, but these days it is true: I feel small, and it is hard to see the good. It is hard to see the sun.
“Taking steps is easy - standing still is hard.”