Some Thoughts on Spring and New Growth.

What is it about spring that makes me so introspective and self-aware? Maybe I’m always like this and I only notice when the sun starts shining more.

I’ve been walking home when I get the chance (when the weather and other obligations don’t eliminate it as a possibility) and it’s wonderful and refreshing and also sad. The plants are starting to peek out of the earth. On my walk last week I stopped to look at the most delicate purple flowers already blossoming, despite the fact that no other plant life around it was really thriving yet.  It was beautiful and it broke my heart a little.

I think Easter is very conveniently timed during Spring. Is there a more appropriate analogy for Jesus bursting back from death than the beautiful flowers that lay dormant in frozen earth finally bursting forth with dazzling colors? I think not.

But this year the flowers remind me of myself, too. I feel like I’m coming back to life after a winter during which I was struggling to feel normal. This happens to me every year, of course. But it seems a little more pronounced and profound than usual this year. And the flowers remind me of myself even more than that; so delicate and so fragile and still, against all odds, pushing through. When I looked at the little purple flowers it was like I could see myself struggling to grow and change and push against the shape of me. 

Sometimes my heart breaks for myself. Has that ever happened to any of you? Have you ever thought about your poor little broken, shitty self and just felt deeply sorrowful for it? Maybe that’s weird and/or super self-pitying sounding. It doesn’t feel that way though. It doesn’t feel like I’m saying “boo-hoo, feel bad for me!”… it’s more like I can stand outside myself and acknowledge that I’m a person and I’m extremely broken and have some really genuine empathy towards myself. Anyway, I’ve been feeling that profoundly this Spring. Like, “Oh look, you were this weird, sad little grub all winter, but now you’re finally a worm and you’re able to stretch and squirm and someday soon you’ll be a butterfly. That’ll be nice. Let’s stick it out til the butterfly stage, okay?” (Yes, I know that was a ridiculous mixed metaphor and that those three things aren’t ever the same creature, but I don’t care. Let me be me.) And it's nice. It's nice to recognize my own brokenness and allow it, consciously, to exist. It's nice to take a moment and realize that I'm growing and stretching my skin and changing shape and becoming something just slightly better than before.

So yeah, that’s where I am these days.

Unrelated: Keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks because I finally (!!!!) have some more posts from my road trip queued to publish. Maybe I'll actually get my whole August road trip onto the interwebs! Although...don't hold your breath.