Delving into the Psyche, Depression/Anxiety, Happy Things, Spirituality, The Zebra

Spring

BY bonnie

The kids and I have been on Spring Break and it has been so, so good.

Last week, I struggled under a wet blanket, made of wool and smelling of old damp things. Last week I had a flare up of one of my illnesses: this time it was depression. It was triggered by a small (not really) thing and I wound up spending 36 hours crying and trying not to cry at everything and nothing. Things got a little better after that, but I was still wearing shoes of cement and walking through boggy mindfields. It was a struggle to make it to the end of the week with some semblance of functioning, but the knowledge that spring break was on the horizon kept me going.

Things are scant now, we are in the winter of our life’s path and the seasons leading up to this winter were not exactly fecund so our stores were already low: money, goods… mental energy to handle the stressors that continually arise.

We have never been wealthy; we have always been low-income, but we managed to make ends meet and we managed to enjoy small extravagances through careful planning and resourcefulness. My first divorced Mother’s Day, I had only enough gas to get us to Balboa Park where we took a free tour and listened to a free concert and it is one of my favorite memories. But those days I had not yet been beaten down by all the various Systems that are antagonistic towards the poor or the disabled. It is harder these days to find energy to be resourceful like I used to be.

But this week has been such a blessing. Slowly, I have begun feeling like the old Me again. The kids and I have gone on a little hike to enjoy the superbloom of wildflowers, we visited the Wild Animal Park to see butterflies and take a tram ride, we visited my university for GradFest and my children looked on so proudly while I had my graduate photo taken. We have been silly together and we have navigated difficulties together. I have allowed myself plenty of rest and forgiven myself for not doing as much work as I had hoped. We have watched movies and played games. It has been the best week we’ve all had in a long, long time. We all feel happy.

I have felt myself being knitted back together.

I didn’t even realize I had come apart.

In my chest, in a place behind my stomach and nestled just below my heart: this is the place where I am held together by the threads of family and love and beauty and wholeness. Over time, through traumas and betrayals, my threads have been snipped or have come loose. It’s not something you notice right away; it happens so slowly like being boiled alive. And then you are walking around, jostling the parts of your soul until they are bruised. You walk more carefully like you are stepping on a floor of glass and too much movement will send you crashing through into the void below, but still you never notice.

Until you begin being knit back together.

It is a physical sensation. A tightness, but not a threatening squeeze like anxiety. Rather, it is a good tightness, like being swaddled, or cuddled. But more than that, really. It is a healing sensation. I am becoming whole again.

This is not the end, I know. Life is still very hard, things are still tenuous. I will likely come undone a thousand times before I find true and complete stability (if such a thing exists – if such a thing will exist in the future). But right now, I am here in this moment giving thanks.

Ostara (which my family and I did not celebrate because of my flare) is a holiday marking Springtime, fecundity, growth. It is an equinox which is all about balance. In the context of the journey of the Sun, it is a time in between rebirth and death, in between the darkness of winter and the light of summer. If my graduation happening at Yule was appropriate, then so is this. My spring is returning. It may return with winter storms, with mucky flares of swamp walking, but the darkness is already halfway gone and I am facing the return of the Sun.

Onwards!

The Zebra, Wheel of the year

Goths Love Spring, Too

BY bonnie

I’ve always had underlying feminist intentions, even when I was a kid and didn’t understand really how much feminism is still needed (because I was raised by weirdly fundamentalist people). But there was a part of me which rebelled against girly things such as romance and flowers and screaming about insects and loving the color pink. Some of these were more true at some ages than others. For instance my 7th grade self read way too much VC Andrews and wore the absolute SHIT out of this one pale pink hoodie.

But by 9th grade, when I started becoming the human I’d grow up to be, I swore off girly things pretty much entirely for the next few years. Of course, this was also during the height of Grunge, and during this time I began discovering other subcultures as well. And, while I’ve never actually been goth (partially because I lack the commitment to dedicate myself to any one particular facet of subculture), I felt kinship with goths because of our shared love of Robert Smith and hatred of the sun and preppies.

When I visited Hawaii when I was 22, I didn’t expect to love it a whole lot. I considered myself a more Londony/rainy kind of person than a tropical/beachy kind of person. I went because I wanted to travel, and because it was my last trip with my grandparents, and because I wanted to understand more about my family history (we are not Hawaiian, but they lived there in the 1950’s). Of course Hawaii was all, “Yeah, whatever. You know you’re gonna love me.” And, indeed, Hawaii had the last laugh. Even Londony goths can love Hawaii. Fact.

Similarly, when choosing a favorite season (having lists of favorites, it turns out, remains important well past eight years old. my favorite planet is Jupiter), I assumed I’d choose winter or autumn. Because they’re the more gothy of the seasons. Spring and summer are all cheerleader peppy and colors and sunshine and happiness. And, in the words of Sally Sparrow, “Sad is happy for deep people.” And, true enough, if I lived in a place where we had actual seasons, autumn might be my favorite (but not winter because, let’s face it, for all my complaining about stupid happy sunshine, I am a delicate flower when it comes to temperatures and snow is downright terrifying). However, we don’t have seasons, and our autumns are not spectacular with all the colors of fire lighting the path into the darkness of winter. So I’ve neglected to choose a favorite season, likely because I sense, deep within myself, that my favorite season might just be that pinkest and preppiest of seasons. Crap.

This year I’ve deeply pondered such a possibility: Is spring my favorite season? Is that acceptable for someone with an inner goth such as myself? And I’ve had a sort of awkward internal struggle between that side of myself that fancies itself a Deep Person for appreciating Dark Things and that, more suffocated side of myself, who thinks flowers and blue skies are pretty lovely actually so there. And I have to admit she’s right. There is something about the promise of springtime. Of new life and new beginnings. Of that particular green of new leaves that really doesn’t exist at any other time of the year. Of trees exploded in blossom – sometimes so overexcited about flowering that they cannot even be bothered to grow leaves until the flower festivals have been celebrated.

So there. I grudgingly admit that I love the flowers. The pinks. The purples. The greens. The sunny skies. The warmth on the shoulders.

As it turns out, goths can totally love springtime, too.