I don't recognize how much I miss something until it directly confronts me. I knew I missed deserts and mountains, but it wasn't until the dusky scent of petrichor that I realized how long it's been since I had a summer storm, how majestic warm rain can be, how soul-electrifying it feels to witness light crack the sky.
These magical re-awakenings are gifts. Sometimes they are instances gifted after years, like tonight's storm. Sometimes, they are more systemic but no less surprising—like every July and August, when I meet myself again. The school year has a way of wearing me down to my barest elements. Out of survival, I retreat. I become an automaton: wake up, drive, plan, present, grade, drive, Alex, eat, sleep, repeat.
In the summer, I meet Cat. I usually only emerge after a solid week of sleep, sleep sudden and deep and always disorienting. Twelve hour nights. Naps, grabbed in cars and couches and movies. Quick descents moments after putting Alex in her crib, unconscious before she stops burbling to herself.
After that vicious game of catch-up, my brain awakes for the first time in months. I ADORE having a brain again. Knowing I am capable of thought and innovation and creativity blindsides me every time, since I've usually spent the past six months or so mourning its death and resigning myself to a life of boring mediocrity.*
So begins a whirlwind two months of discovery. Desperately, I try to stockpile experiences and explorations and epiphanies, hoping that some will sustain me through the next ten months. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the year I carry it with me all year long.
Here are a few things that bolster that hope, things I will try to jealous-guard against the school-year-soul-strip:
-Engaged veterans, those people who feed their brains so they, in turn, feed others
-Meeting a brain twin, a synced spirit long after I'd abandoned hope in such a person
-Water and rocks
-Reading, both for myself in for Alex
-Alex, all games, letters, numbers, bikes, penguins, happysaddramaticponderous
-Conversations with friends from a decade ago
-Interest in building new friendships
-Finding people interesting
-Story ideas
-Family history, from blood to chosen bonds
-City walks and talks with my love. Encountering each other in daytime. Spending more than an hour together
-Brick houses, porch columns, hot cement
-An internal running commentary that makes me laugh, shake my head, and drives me to record snippets
-Writing, writing, writing, writing, writing...
*And no amount of pep talks convince me otherwise, Taylor. Although I do appreciate the effort.
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