Unlike most, I love Mondays. I always have. Mondays are the beginning of a new week, and I like beginnings. I’ve always been a morning person. Mornings are the beginning of a new day, and I like beginnings. So Monday mornings? The best. This seems to have been true since I was a young girl, old enough to notice that I liked some things better than others, so I’m calling it “my nature.” I am a morning person by nature. I have always preferred sunrises to sunsets, eastern light best of all in a house. It feels like renewal, somehow regenerative.

Only in retrospect am I realizing that I also liked Monday mornings throughout my life because I preferred school to home with family, and work to home with husband. Monday morning provided someplace to go, away from the chaos. It’s sad to see that in retrospect, to not have been aware enough to have seen it at the time I was living it. Big-ass learning curve I’m on this incarnation…phew!

As it happens, this morning I feel at peace. I have not felt at peace in a very long time. My dear long-suffering friends have put up with some very bad behavior coming from me. I’m tiresome. Unreliable. All I have done is cry, swear, and moan. I have even discovered that when you get a solicitation text on your phone – the kind you respond STOP to unsubscribe from – you will also be unsubscribed if you respond FUCK OFF. It works the same but is so much more satisfying. I’m just ornery.

My depression – no, despondency – has been limitless. Since October, so, all fucking winter. This winter has been particularly severe. Dark, extremely cold, historic amounts of snow, power outages. I don’t remember a winter this ugly in decades. It matched my state of mind perfectly. Cart meet horse…never mind…the sun is out this morning. The temperature will soar over 40 degrees today…woohoo. The snow is melting. I can get out of the house. There is hope.

The truth is, of course, this state has been grief. It seems to be bottomless. I’m sure everyone is tired of hearing about it. Losing my beloved familiar broke something open in me. Something that had been festering for a long, long time. Perhaps more than one lifetime. That’s how it feels. I am inconsolably angry – for both of us, you might be glad to know. If I can survive this I’d like to think it will benefit more than just me. But who knows…the longer I live, the less I seem to understand about how things work here. I’m new here.

So, now what? From moments of screaming in the shower to resigned meditation, I have repeatedly heard, “wait until spring,” “don’t make any decisions until spring,” “rest until spring.” I yelled and sniped and cajoled back, “be more specific,” “give me a date.” I am so entirely done trying to interpret spirit’s wisdom, or my intuition. Give it to me straight or shut up. And I did – I did – hear back: end of March. March 30th to be precise. And here we are.

Now it is time to discover the entirety of my nature. To learn the language of my soul. To find out how life works if I don’t make compromises. To face east and let the sunrise light me up, now that I am free to be myself.