we must sing
we must sing
we must sing
Deposit sent in to UW Law: check
Notice given at work: (basically) check
Moving company scheduled: check
Road trip planned/dates set/route mapped: check, check, check
New address in Seattle: ………*crickets chirping*
I’m trying not to get nervous. Ha. If you knew me, you’d know that’s like, the sun trying not to rise. But oh well.
I don’t know if it was this blog or my last one (this is the theme of this post, bipolar with everything, I binge and purge media just like everything else…) - I mentioned that I’ve always been connected to geography and weather in an uncanny way.
I mean yes, my mood - phases of the moon, the weather, the seasons, are all clearly connected to mood swings for me - but it seems like my whole life is, too.
The first day of Spring (the real one, not my manic OMG ITS WARM day from a while back) was on us just yesterday I believe, and with it new life, new light, new hope - not just the kind they market in car commercials and cleaning product ads - but really, when the sun comes out after a long cold winter, I can’t help but feel the winds of change are right behind it.
And if the patterns of my very pattern-oriented life are meaningful, then that’s correct: with Spring comes change - graduation, moving, goodbyes, new challenges, new adventures.
In 2 months I am moving, with my partner, to Seattle, where (I hear) a new life awaits me as a law student and future righter-of-wrongs, a secret identity to be hidden beneath a calm exterior of a happy residential lesbian with 2 cats and possibly-maybe-hopefully a dog, a yard, and, you know, all that stuff.
I think it also has a lot to do with where I’ve lived. Seattle, London, Western MA, and DC - all places with protracted and dreary winters. I’ve noted repeatedly that there’s something undeniably magical about that first warm day, the first day of sunshine where it’s almost warm enough to go outside without a coat (and everyone does anyway) - and suddenly what was once a dreary town/city in one day becomes a place swarming with people smiling, chatting, taking time to eat lunch in the park, being alive.
So as go nature’s bipolar annual swings, as go my own, and now, from months of darkness punctuated by sometimes-terrifying mania comes calm (a relative term, for me, the high-strung-OCD-perfectionist poster-child), comes a moment to take time to photograph the new flowers, eat lunch in the park with my best friend, and picnic on the roof with the woman I want to spend my life with. Now comes, for the first time in months, self-forgiveness and breaths of fresh air where before there were fear and anxiety, self-loathing and shadowy doubt; now (slowly, like the warmth creeping into the Capitol) the shadows dissipate and I am left standing, yet again, having survived another round with nature’s attempt to out-bipolar my genetic inclination to win that battle every time.
As with every year, this March I dusted off my camera and my $600 worth of digital media software (I am an artist, you know, just a skittish bipolar one who hides when it’s dark - I’ve been well-received in digital media circles since high school) and actually took a fucking photograph. I climbed onto the mossy bark at the National Zoo in my work pants and dress shoes, headphones blaring my favorite music, people staring, to get that perfect macro cherry blossom shot you saw.
I smiled, un-self-consciously, and did what it is I love to do.
So this is the month I celebrate surviving another round with this basket case set of mood-swings they call “mania” and “depression,” I celebrate that I have found the strength, within my self (the only place I’ve ever found it), and lived to breath in Beautiful Spring Air one more time. I celebrate that I am stronger, more passionate, more driven, more capable, and more dynamic than I thought, and that gives me hope.
So happy Spring to you, and Happy New Year to me.
