The Contradictions of Spring

I usually write one melancholy post every spring, so here is. Just embrace it. Let it happen. Get some hot tea or a good beer and listen to this playlist while you read. (And read last year's post while you're at it.)

The spring melancholy isn’t intentional; it just happens.

Spring is officially my least favorite season because it's full of contradictions, especially this year.

One minute I’m driving by a field bursting with yellow wildflowers, and the next minute I’m suffocating in work-life balance.

Everything comes alive in spring, but somehow all I can see are the parts of me that aren’t fully grown.

For me, spring is the Tuesday of the year: that time in the middle where nothing special happens, it just happens. I know this isn’t true. I know Spring is full of special things like Easter and fresh cut grass and Daylight Savings Time. In spring, I start driving with my windows down and shaving my legs twice a week and spending way too much time smelling azaleas and wisteria. But I really have to look hard for these nuggets. They end up being unexpected, pleasant surprises. So mostly, Spring feels like a never ending Tuesday.

These are the steps to falling apart

One weekend toward the end of March, I was exhausted but couldn't sleep. This was the first flag that alerted me that things were not okay.

Then came the queasy stomach, the lack of appetite for coffee, the heart racing and chest tightening and thoughts threatening to spiral out of control. It’s funny how the longer you live with anxiety the more familiar you become with your body’s warning signals.

I knew that I was dangerously close to breaking, and was honestly surprised I hadn’t already fallen apart (pushing myself to mental & emotional limits is normal for me).

I wanted so badly for this spring to be different, for it to not be the annual season for anxiety. But I still found myself dancing with the edge of a precipice. Why? Well, I think it has something to do with being a rookie at self-employment, keeping too many tabs open (on my computer & in my brain), drinking too much caffeine, and striving to be better at basically everything (leading, following, communicating, managing, eating, resting, ugh).

My priorities--and thus my time--became an impossibly tangled knot, and I didn’t know where one thing stopped and another began. Everything ran together and I felt like I was sprinting, waist deep, through mud.

and breaking open

I met up with my parents a couple of Sundays ago, and was in a sour mood. They were driving from Dallas back to Ruston, and I met them in Lindale for lunch and Starbucks.

I put on a hard, badass exterior, ensuring them and myself that everything was fine, but I still felt fragile. Like I could ram my head into a brick wall again and again, but the gentlest touch would break me open. So I came with my guard up. I was prepared to be tough and hold it together and block everything out and was acting like a complete ass in the process.

Of course, my parents weren't offended. They saw past the tough-girl facade and wanted to love her back to tenderness.

I distracted myself with the mug selection at Starbucks, and my mom stood next to me, asking if I was okay. I said yes, I was just in a bad mood; work was stressful, but I was fine. Then my dad came over, and they both asked if there was anything they could do to help, anything they could do to love me well.

And dammit if I didn’t start crying right there in Starbucks. I had held it together for so long -- through lunch, through ordering & waiting for drinks at Starbucks, through this week and last, through the first 3 months of 2018. I was holding it together just fine on my own.

Until someone offered to help. Until someone asked, genuinely, what they could do to love me well.

That did it for me. I had prepared for brick walls but was caught completely off guard by tenderness. I cracked and broke and all the harbored stress came out. It was painful, but only for a second. Like when you finally let your arms down after you’ve been holding them over your head for a while. Pure relief

As much as I avoided it, I found healing in tears, in being with safe people who love me, in dark chocolate covered almonds, in being told it’s okay to not have it together.

So since that day I’ve been taking baby steps back to health & normalcy. That's all you can ever do, really. I’ve been going on walks with friends and choosing to invest in meaningful relationships and mental health and wildflowers.

There are 3 vases full of them in my kitchen right now -- weird smelling yellow and red weeds that will probably die tomorrow. They are constant reminders of the contradictions of spring: that to bloom means you have to die, that to grow means being uncomfortable, that the beautiful and whimsical are fleeting but they always come back in time.