falling face down
"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." Henri Bergson
From the moment we’re born, we’re transitioning.
Newborn to infant to toddler. Whiplash.
Living and dying with each breath.
Existing as we were, as we are, and as will be all at once — the great challenge.
I should be used to this by now.
I hoped to burst into Spring.
I hoped to stroll about with Delilah (the pup) — inhaling fresh, warmish air, watching birds nestle into freshly packed nests, gazing at the magnetizing hues around me as the sun gently kisses my face.
I hoped to stand under famous cherry blossoms relishing the joy of their short blooms and the excitement their presence brings to an exhausted district. Their existence a symbol of impermanence, of marching time.
A reminder to be grateful.
Stop and look now! As soon as it starts, it ends.
But life so rarely plays out as we hope…
On our first Spring walk, a squirrel fell off a branch, landing inches from us. We screamed — the squirrel, Delilah, and I. And as the small creature lept away, Delilah lunged forward in pursuit. And so did I and my latte. To the pavement, we went. My coffee-drenched body and bruised ego gently tugged Delilah back to the safety of our home. “We’ll start again tomorrow,” I thought.
Except rain poured fast and steady for the next two days. With each pitter-patter, I sank deeper into the couch until we fused. I binge-watched Billions until my eyes ached. That’s a lie. Watching requires focus and I spent hours scrolling through my phone and only occasionally glancing at the TV. “Shit! I missed something important,” I said as I hit rewind for the tenth time.
I swaddled myself in layers of blankets and nursed a Diet Coke that I nestled in my armpit, each sip requiring little more than a slight neck adjustment.
Delilah radiated frustration and disdain — with me, with the rain.
“You’re crossing the line,” her eyes seemed to say. “You’re about to take this too far.”
I was on the verge of rotting into mush.
Shame crept in.
Did my hopes ever stand a chance?
I found comfort this Winter. I experienced the calmness I’d longed for. I was the hibernating bear of my dreams — my nervous system slowed, finally resting. I released my breath.
I honored the early sunsets. The layers of clothes. The hum of the heater. The crunch of early morning grass. The jolt that coursed through my veins when the wind hit my cheeks.
I smiled while massaging lotion onto my raw, cracked knuckles. At the sizzle, pop, and smell of burning wood. At warm soup touching my lips. At melting into a bath and feeling my temperature level out.
Mostly, I loved the consistency.
I thought I was prepared to leave Winter and flow into Spring, nourished, fulfilled, and ready to tackle the next phase with a soundly, surely beating heart. But I’d grown too accustomed to Winter’s stillness, the quiet, and the simplicity. And the arrival of Spring’s exuberant growth, vibrant colors, and busyness overwhelmed my senses. I failed to recalibrate, and a small setback resulted in a full shutdown.
Despite my being in constant transition, I forgot the dexterity and humility needed to move oneself through a shift. That even positive transitions can evoke a sense of loss and resistance. That the pull of the familiar is powerful — it has shaped my identity and planted roots deep within. And there’s a grieving that comes with leaving the past behind — the rituals, relationships, and reference points that have defined my daily existence. Like shedding old skin, it can initiate an identity crisis as I try to reconstruct who I am in a new context without the comfortable trappings of my former life. I felt reality gripping and ripping those established parts, so I burrowed inward. “Let me hold this…just a while longer. Please.”
The future that transitions promise is a void of the unknown, full of risks and insecurity. My instincts recoil at such formless possibility. It’s intimidating, like floating in the ocean, staring down the vastness, no land in sight. And I crave the safety of the delineated and proven, not the amorphous potential of the unexplored. This discomfort leaves me clinging with tired fists to what I understand. And it’s an unsettling reminder of how little I control, and how easily what I do can slip away.
Still, existing demands that I continue rebirthing myself, requiring that I loosen the hold on who I was to make room for who I can become.
And I remain the well-meaning opposition, knowing that stepping forward is to accept the turbulence of becoming.
Transitions are hard. Even when they're expected. Especially when they’re wanted. And how I wanted to want Spring!
And sometimes, despite willingly gliding into the next phase, we face plant and tumble back down the hill.
That’s not failure, that’s life.
With a bit of courage, we crawl on.
But we’re raw. There’s sensitivity in the air, a roughness. It’s radiating from me, from you. I feel it now.
We’re stumbling but we’re still moving.
We don’t simply awake aligned. We need time to calibrate the scale, to find balance.
So, here’s some grace for you, and a scoop for me. For it’s in my best interest, and yours, to find ways to be tender and generous and flexible during these periods. To acknowledge and feel the anxiety and fray of the newness, without losing ourselves completely.
But I did lose myself — the whole damn thread — for 48 hours last week. That’s okay. I’m disappointed. That’s okay too, because jagged edges grow smoother with each passing second. And there’s growth on the other side of shame—
The future's expanse stretches before me, uncharted, bristling with uncertainty.
I linger, solemnized.
One last look back at the compass rose, before falling into the journey.
I'll leave you with a piece from Ada Limón, which fell upon my eyes the sunrise after my rotting binder. And like a sniffing salt, lifted my consciousness and lured me away from the darkness. Reminding me that I can always start again.
“Instructions On Not Giving Up”
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
PS: Tomorrow morning, I’ll be in DC staring at the cherry blossoms — a little late and yet right on time.
Come summertime, 140 trees will be removed and ground into mulch due to increased flooding of the Tidal Basin.
I’m a witness to their last performance.
And the beat goes on…
Aw so lovely. It reminds me of something an old friend of mine used to call “the violence of spring.”
Transition takes courage (or blind stupidity). My experience. Such a good piece of writing.