For a large portion of my life, I had the audacity to look Spring in the face and say it was my least favorite season. “What’s the point of it?”, I’d say. This is also coming from a girl that has internally denied having seasonal depression for the last several years because I am a Capricorn that has spent her life obsessing over the holidays and Christmas time.
I remember in 2019, on the night of December 23rd, I sat in my living room, alone and illuminated by Christmas lights, feeling the lowest I had ever felt in my life. Nothing had happened, I had spent the day making Christmas cookies with my family, yet I sat on the couch with hot chocolate in my hand feeling completely hopeless. I think this is the first time I realized, 3 days before my 19th birthday, that mental health was not just defined by cause and effect.
Today, after having experienced a few winters with this struggle, I view Spring in a new light. Spring is a time when the air smells different and childhood memories feel more vivid. I think living in Texas I really took advantage of Spring. The weather is no different than what we experience in fall and even January. There is much more to it however than the weather or the allergies it brings. For many places that have tough winters, it's the light at the end of the tunnel, and I see it the same way for my mental health. Obviously, this isn’t anything new for a lot of people, but it took me a while to recognize the importance of Spring. The importance of flowers on the side of the road and blue skies and green trees. Going on walks and swimming and lavender lemonade. I wish to not think so logically moving forward. To not just like winter because of Christmas and not just dislike Spring because there was no defining event that made it special in my head.
I instead want to enjoy the sun (that's not too hot yet) and stores filled with pastel colors and bluebonnets without being so definitive. Taylor Swift says,
“I wanna be defined by the things that I love
Not the things that I'm afraid of,
Not the things that haunt me in the middle of the night”.
What you love is so much more important than what makes you anxious. What makes you smile is much more important than spending a day in bed. Moving forward, I want to embody this. All anxiety and depression have the power to do is make me more grateful for the moments that feel serendipitous. I think we should all remember to embrace what feels good without needing a logical explanation. I think we should all lose shame in changing our minds. My whole life, people have tried to tell me I have changed, but all I have done is change my mind. About what I wanted, who I wanted to be, or what my goals were. Why be rigid in an idea that you outgrew, just because you fear it is what people define you by?
All this is to say that in this open-minded society we supposedly live in, more people find comfort in rigidity than we would like to admit. I vow to enjoy moments on intuition. To treat spring as a new era for me to explore happiness and grow into myself. I believe it is important for us to reject ideas we hold onto for protection and comfort, as there could be an opportunity to enjoy life a little more on the other side.
