The seasons can be so heavy.
When it starts to smell like summer, it feels like my torso won't contain the excitement in my belly. The potential of the warmer temperatures seems endless and the scent reminds me of more carefree days of trying new things in my childhood, and I get excited for what new things might come, the people I might meet, the late nights I might share with my friends, in any given year. I look forward to my birthday as though that actually means something, and I overbook myself because it feels like nothing could go wrong.
Then, I can feel it in the air when fall is over and winter days are here. I always know when we've seen the last warm day. I can feel it on my skin, down to my bones.
It takes a couple of weeks of the winter air and I can feel my heart swell - it feels like my chest won't contain it. It starts to feel like summer was a distraction, and that new, fun potential was good and all, but I need roots. I need the people I knew when I was younger, when we were allowed to have our baggage and our stories, and to be a bit broken. I need the people who saw my ugliness during the ugly times and loved me. I need the people who let me have my heart full, whether it was love or anger. I find myself looking for home.
Winter sends me searching for somewhere to be a bit broken, because life is good - actually, life is great - but no matter what I've built for myself, and no matter how much more I've become who I want to be, I will always be my story.
Even those that have become new people in light of their past haven't totally overcome their stories - in fact, the sentiment seems to be that it never goes away, you just get better at talking over the voices in your head, better at believing the new dialogue. But that old shit still lives in your brain and forces you to acknowledge it even if only to dismiss it.
So much of adult life is acting like we're not broken. Even when I was a kid, in my family it was our job to just "get over" the smallest cracks and biggest chasms, but now that adulthood is here, apparently we need to shut the fuck up all together. Life has no room for being rooted in a full heart, I guess. Or maybe we've just figured out that everyone's a bit broken, and we're kind of focused on our own shit. Either way, I don't totally disagree. There's shit to do. But there's still gotta be something familiar, a soft place to land. Maybe it's just me - all I've ever wanted was a soft place to land.
Fortunately - and unfortunately too - I feel deeply rooted to places and people, and I find myself returning to where I once was like some kind of homing device. Fortunately, because I do (or did) have places and people that I can go to or recall from memory to get my fix. Unfortunately too, though, because this will never, ever, not once, ever be the same again.
Most years, I don't remember bringing myself here, but it makes perfect sense that I'm here when I am. Only once I'm here can I connect the dots that I'm looking for something, and that the connection to this place is time-bound. I find myself here every winter, reading old entries and keeping up with who might still be writing. I see the incredibly familiar blue and orange screen, and my heart feels like it's about to burst with longing, nostalgia, fondness and a whole lot of gratitude.
I will always believe we were stronger together, and whether you were broken and ugly like me or not, I loved you. I'm so grateful to have had you.
2:01 p.m. - 2016-10-28
Recent entries:
Throwaway
This Too Shall Pass
20 Years Later
I Heard That Hysterectomies Were Meant to Cure Women of Hysteria, But This One Is Making Me Crazy
More Fucking Nostalgia (And A Little Panic)
My profile
Archives
Notes
Diaryland
Random
RSS
others:
TimDangerous
Kelly
Ville
Mindlesslug
Mists
Unsentletter
Argentum
SpookyTurtle