The Seasons Change and Our Hearts Move On
I am a great enjoyer of watching the seasons change, so I’ve been living the dream for the last months as spring has sprung. New flowers, trees blossoming, green everywhere - it is truly the antidote to seasonal affective disorder and the malais of winter.
As the season change, I also clock how the recent heartaches hurt less. I underdressed for my first date with Blondie, and as a result, the wintery walk home was frigid. Now, when the sun is shining down on my face in the park and I’m sweating while wearing shorts, the pain of his brush off seems far away. When I realized that an ex had boo’ed up with someone he deemed more special, I was trapped inside with the sun setting at 5:30pm. Now the sun won’t set before 8pm for 3 months, and I walked through his neighborhood without even remembering to look out for him in fear.
It’s a tale as old as time, but time really does heal wounds. Maybe there is never a complete healing, but incidents like these grow smaller in the rearview as we get further away. They become pebbles on the beach of my memory, not a large boulder the size of a small boulder blocking my progress.
I tried to think of other pains that faded with time, to remind myself that these most recent culprits will also dissolve into the background at some point. I thought of a few - the guy who said we were too good of friends to risk dating, the guy who rejected me 4 miles into an 8 mile hike, the guy who just said “no, no, no” when I told him I had a crush on him. All of those really stung at the time. That hiker, woof - we weren’t even dating and I couldn’t get off my couch for a week because I felt so horrible. But looking back now, it’s astonishing how bad of a fit each of those guys was for me. And how I’m not-so-secretly relieved to not be in their lives anymore.
In the pain of heartache, it is hard sometimes to see it as liberation. But that’s what it is. That’s what rejection has always been for me, even if I didn’t recognize that in the moment (because who ever does?). A doorway leading to a better place.
It gave me great comfort to wake up today and realize I was smiling from last nights concert, and not licking my wounds over these recent heartaches. I didn’t think of either Blondie or the ex at all until midway through my walk through the park, realizing I had spent miles in the last month or two ruminating on them there.
Time may not be linear, but it is damn good medicine. I am not ready to be 100% emotionally available yet, but the leaves are getting full on the trees and my heart doesn’t hurt as much. The seasons roll forward and the time for new love is nigh.
