Questions

What is it about these changing phases that makes them so more loved? The way it blows hot and cold, this way and that, pulling us to and fro; variations making us...feel.

I have not had time to let myself think. Or rather, I have had the time, but less of the inclination. Or, well, to be honest, I am not even sure about what really has happened. I simply got lost in the pull and sway of routine, and while I longed for something to save me from it, I don't think I really made an effort. I let myself get lost.

But something has snagged inside me, and once again, I don't really know what it is. I let a whole summer go by unaccounted for, and that only heightens the irony since it is that heat and respective sense of relaxation that is supposed to go along with that season that should have let me fly loose. But it didn't happen. I cannot really tell you now what happened these months past; just trying to remember makes me feel like I had lost my memory and it's all been blocked.

It could be frustrating, but somehow I'm not letting it be that big a deal. So much more has happened, inside and out, that really sets perspective in its place. Rippling tides that have increasingly tugged me underneath and made me feel like I was drowning and only thing left was to survive, all other luxuries - writing - be damned.

It hasn't been anyone's fault but mine. I realize that I have become a different person; or rather I have let myself become a person that has always been me, only that it was not previously provided the circumstances and environment that would have allowed it to exist in its own right. Yesterday I was thinking how I used to be this buoyant bubble of hyperactivity and mirth, always giddy, always jokey, always 'that crazy, happy girl', and the inside scoop was all the while I was that girl, I was actually someone deeper inside, sad and lonely and craving for something more, and therefore all that buoyancy was somehow my defensive mechanism. It still is. But now, somehow, I have let my guard down and become this quieter and much more soulful person. And as I was thinking all this, I realized I also didn't like this much more honest person, because even while it was honest, it felt wrong.

At an intersection of myself, where the hyper met the depressed, I remember this was where the appreciation of who I was at a height. Meaning, somehow when I let it slip that, when people had figured me for this lighthearted ball of joy, I had hidden depths, somehow they appreciated who I was even more. One one hand, this was gratifying, but then again it also grated and was annoying because they had made assumptions. But then again, we all make assumptions, and I believe we make more assumptions about ourselves than anyone else, which is why we end up lost.

Sometimes the hardest thing is to figure out who we are. And either we face it heads on and try out mightiest to solve this universal problem before we kick the bucket and it's no longer a problem, or we just don't care. But to truly not care means we don't give a damn what anyone thinks, that we perhaps lose out in developing who we are, perhaps become hostile and anti-social, or amoral. It is the act of caring who we are with respect to who we are in the presence of others that keeps us who we are.  And to understand this underlying concept, we really actually need to take a moment to really think it through; just as we sometimes need to take a breath, or a step back, and consider who it is we wish to be.

So the next question is this: is the act of filtering ourselves for how we act, for what we say, somehow dishonest to the idea of just being yourself? That is where, if we are not careful, we may fall over the edge and get lost, especially if you spend too much time trying to answer this.

I have pulled away from 'interacting' in these past months. Like I have said, I don't really know why. I think it was so that I could find myself. I had things to deal with and the top of the list was nurturing the relationship that was most important. Time was in limited supply, so I figured that I would devote the time available toward this one thing, but then it was the very act of constantly keeping watch over how little time there was that somehow corroded the time itself.  Because you are ever more aware to how little there is, and if you are not careful, you find yourself wanting more, and more, and more when there is no more forthcoming. And the reaction to not receiving, and continuously wanting is not healthy. It eats you from the inside out.

Things which remain constant somehow lose their appeal. Perhaps this is why we allow ourselves to slip a little bit, and sometimes a lot, allowing ourselves to become splattered by mud as we trod onward on our journey, allowing ourselves to dip into a pool of misery or turmoil, because it adds some spice or flavour to an otherwise bland pool of sunshine.

So why is it that we internalize these changes, why the dynamic of movement from hot to cold, from up to down, from left to right, from dark to light, make us feel so much more alive? It's a question I have answered so many times and I am always still left asking it.

Seven

Within the past several months I realize that I've been telling myself 'I wish the weather stays exactly like this; it's perfect.'  The weather has changed in a million ways, and each time I've said it, it's been entirely different. And yet, somehow, as I slowly come to this realization, each utterance was truly heartfelt. It's strange.

Yesterday, the weather was grey. Cloudy and dull. And yet, as I walked outside, I felt my insides swoon. It was gorgeous out. Balmy and that heady mix where you just could not tell what kind of weather it really was. It was all four seasons with all its sub-climates all intermingling and turning about. Spring and autumn doing the waltz, summer and winter debating over our heads. I sat at the window, enjoying my lunch and felt myself ease into a cocoon of contentment.

It was romantic weather, I told myself. How I came to this conclusion, I could not explain. It simply was romantic.

And though I reluctantly pulled myself away from that cocoon to get back to the daily grind, that tiny bubble of serendipitous contentment stayed with me throughout the day. I had not expected it in the least. But somehow I found it, or rather, it came to me.

Somehow it has awoken that sleeping spectre within me. Enough so much that I am here to write.  I have not been able to do so for the longest time, and in fact, I have retreated further and further into my self-containment so that I did not feel the least bit inclined to interact with anyone at all, not to the fault or lacking within anyone who was - is - someone to me. It wasn't you, it was me, totally me.

I am not entirely certain how this foray back onto long vacant places will last. Again as with the way the wind blows this way and that, perhaps it will come and go just as quickly. Perhaps the way I've tilted my head trying to decipher if this breeze was warm or cold, unable to truly distinguish such closely aligned threads of gold, silver, rust, or copper, filaments of grass and crystals of ice, maybe just maybe, it will flourish in as many different ways, unexpectedly.

Qotd

There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school.

-- Sharon Olds