Growth

(Digital; drawn on my phone)

I hate February.

March might be more aggressively depressing and April is the war of light mania against seasonal shift despair, but I fucking hate February.

With only slight fluctuations caused by deaths and triumphs, every year follows the same rhythm: June, July, and August are lovely, filled with grilling and pool days and trips to the river. The only drawback of the summer is that I grow tired of weeding, mowing, and the endless war that I must wage with a buckthorn hedge. In October, I cut, split, and haul wood; I watch horror movies and decorate for Halloween and go on adventures to farms to buy gourds and punkins; I go to the MN Zoo for the Jackolantern Spectacular; I say goodbye to summer. In November, I get nervous about the dark and the cold creeping toward me and when December shows up, I don’t notice it has arrived because I’m too busy. In January I think: hey, this year wasn’t so bad! In early February, I’m attributing my blushing, shining mental health to all the time I spend outdoors, and not two weeks later, I’m suddenly so sick of the dark and my feet being cold and my hands being dry that I feel like crying or screaming all the time. In March, I get my hopes raised up by a little more light and the odd 50° day and smashed by the traditional Final 4 Minnesota snowstorm. In April I rinse and repeat but with extra mania because the world is suddenly too bright and my poor little mammal brain doesn’t know if I should throw a party, found a cult, or hang myself in my garage. But finally, near the end of May, I feel good again. Not, like, gold-medal mental health champion good, but, you know: human.

Because it is the time to be so, I'm dutifully sick of the winter and its maladies. My feet really are too cold and I’m convinced that persistently chilly extremities leads to a pervasive sense of emotional isolation.

But I’m also doing exciting things. I’m starting classes in a couple weeks to study counseling, I’m working with my community of artists through Project 25:365 and Art Jam, and I’m raising a colony of shrimp who are very likely going to invent crustacean-driven FTL travel due to density alone.

I can do all of these things (and at least a dozen more) because I’ve been able to grow from the mulch of my dead selves. I used to be ashamed of them, like they’d done something wrong by dying. But they didn’t. They got me here. They’re bloody, but they had to be. There’s no reason to pretty them up, or pretend like change (which is what growth is) is nice. Sometimes, it is horror. That’s okay. It’s not fun. But it’s okay. Blood is a bitch, but it is also a fuel. And sacrifice deserves its due recognition and reverence.

So here it is, in the razor-sharp cold of February, when everything is asleep, including hearts, but seeds and corpses wait, resting in the dark: I say thank you. Everything about you is beautiful.