Lately, my feelings have been dense.
They fluctuate between heavy and light and easy and difficult, but they remain dense.
Every thought packs a punch that I have to take, that I have to feel hit my face and my stomach, ripple through my skin.
I am being weighed down; I am sinking.
It’s too much, and my surroundings are too airy. They are sunlit, and I am wintry, the snow after the false spring, suffocating the grass after giving it hope.
Everything is a little more intense in March, at this point in my life.
Every blank sheet of paper should be filled with notes, with SAT prep, or with gratitude.
Everything is slowly, steadily going away.
The weeks are barreling by, and close friends are about to graduate, and it’s practically summer, and it’s still winter, and I am holding onto the exact, beautiful way my life feels before it morphs into something disgustingly different.
Just like every other March.
I look for green around every corner, just to be met with brown, or worse, white (snow).
Each emotion about all of it is so all-consuming, so ardent, that it sends me spiraling. I just want to be passive, I want to lay in the sun, I want to calm down.
But it’s March, so I can’t.
I’m not at the finish line; I still have four future-deciding tests and not a hint of desire to pull myself together and study. I’ve spent the past year denying the “horror” of junior year, but I guess I found it. It was hiding in the seam between winter and spring, waiting to jump out from behind a wall and make me drop everything. It was a good run, though.
I thought I’d mastered the art of hope, but I am surely losing it.
Last week, I got rained on three times in one day. Each place I went, it started pouring on the way there. Still, I fawned over the beauty of the droplets, finding it amusing. Maybe I should’ve taken it as a sign and just turned around.
When the sun is out, everything is fine. But right now, I still see snow outside my window, and I am falling apart. March is all of the endings and beginnings fighting for space in my mind, fighting over who I get to focus on. Caught in the middle of their conflict, I am wordless. Not speechless—I have been puking out words as though if I stop, I would vomit for real—just wordless.
Unable to describe life with the usual optimism I reach for. My fingers can graze it, but I can’t quite grasp it as I did throughout the fall and early winter. Leaving me frustrated, with late stories, and without real feeling in my columns. Every time, I switch my personal perspective halfway through and then lie for 250 more words.
At least I am being honest by telling you that.
I started March very joyfully, and I still want to remember it that way. Even though my soul is practically crumbling in my hands, so I’ll leave you with this month’s “ode.” A confusing uncertainty of my inability to put my dense thoughts to words. I wanted this to be greener, but right now, I feel colorless. I think it’ll get better. Greener.
I’ll write again when it does.
