Springtime this year feels like biting into the snappiest sugar snap pea and then getting a kiss on the forehead. The sun has found us, at last, and seems to be pulling us in closer. The warmth, the breeze, the crocuses, the vaccines, the hope, all seem to breathe a collective finally. Because, finally, we can see it. There may be something to look forward to beyond this moment, after all. Something real, and blessedly tangible.
This morning I got the official email accepting me as a transfer student to a graduate program here in New York. I didn't move here in January thinking it would be a temporary relocation, but I also arrived with little to no plan. I was dissatisfied and antsy about school, lonely, and deeply wishing to feel like a part of something again, although that piece took a while to reveal itself. It's weird, when you're in the thick of whatever you call this mental funk- pandemic fatigue, anxiety, perhaps a cocktail of both- it feels real until it doesn't.
A few weeks ago, when I decided I did want to stay in grad school after all (albeit maybe a different one), was the first time I felt a glimmer of interest in what I was learning in class that week. It turns out I do, actually, have some interest left. It felt unfamiliar after months of feeling like I had lost it, or perhaps had never had it in the first place. What a lovely reassurance to find fullness where you were expecting an empty room.
Speaking of, here is my first toast of the season- Here's to no more empty rooms! May the warm weather and well-deserved immunity bring us in close proximity to everyone we love, in lots of different and interesting rooms. Ideally, brand new rooms that we can discover together.
Here's to change! For me, the last two seasons have been defined by the seriously uncomfortable fidgets and headaches that accompany profound shifts. So much has changed. The image of a snake shedding its skin comes to mind, however cliché. Or maybe that one dancer in Beyoncé's Ghost video, the one confined to just one long tube of fabric.
Anyway, I only mention the hard stuff because things have changed since then. I feel shedded. I feel different. I can imagine myself moving forward not from the way that I was but from the way I am now. I think there's something here that I can work with.
Finally: Here's to noticing! I am raising up a crispy glass of champagne to all of us, beaming, cheers-ing to how delicious it is to experience things as they happen. To trusting my brain to be able to handle the present. To seeing how lovely the trees are becoming, with their little baby blooms. To everything that's coming, and everything that's been. Cheers, ladies, it's time to feel good again.
- Helen
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