spring

Beware of springtime. Season changes are tough, eh. somehow, springtime is the toughest of all. I swear, the sun stays up longer, illuminating the corners, giving us more daylight to get into some trouble. People are suffering. and the suffering shows up when the sun shines. crocuses turn their brave little heads up to the slowly warming horizon, people emerge from their dens, blinking into the sunlight, and…

…throw away their medication. or pick up a pack of smokes. or start drinking. or let the waves of depression wash over them (“i was going to spend the long cold nights of winter inside, writing the book–what happened? i have failed again”) or release the taut rubber band and ride uncontrolled into manic highs…

Or break up. Among my circle this spring, three of my friends have broken up with their long, long term lovers. 17 years, 9 years, five years…Goodbye. and there is no easy way. no clean good way to break up with a lover…’cause that passion and spark that brought and kept you together has to burn, still–I burn still for my ex-lovers. and with some, that flame has become a good bank of embers where a satisfying friendship stays warm and nourishing. For others that flame eats through the fabric of our time together, exposing dropped threads, weakness, paths for more destruction. but for all, in the weeks and months after the final break, there was only pain. like hacking off a limb with a butter knife. and there is nothing to do but live through it.

I’m so grateful I have decided that no matter what else, I will be committed to the women’s liberation movement. An uprising of women. It’s a movement, but it’s human, too, and it shifts and changes and stays the course, and there are women beside me through all the seasons. We will manage to navigate the storms of springtime, the placid stealth of summer, the melancholy of fall, the depth and anguish of winter–and know it and mark it and find the joy in being part of a movement. Not only a community. a movement. There will be conflicts and tensions and break-ups, but coming together and agreement and celebration and solidarity and resistance and learning–hard hard work. weariness and pain, but also the kind of growth that happens after a good fire. the kind of growth that happens with the application of carefully tended, religiously turned and stirred up compost–ya, it’s all scary and big, icky and smelly–but look at the beauty that emerges! Spring is a season to be endured, stirred, ridden and tamed. Enjoy the aroma of the new blossoms, sure, the glory of new buds, the warmth of the spring sunshine. But there are tests with that. careful. the melting snow reveals no small amount of shit on the ground.