Spring has always represented regrowth and renewal, a universally agreed-upon symbol for hope as nature clears away from Winter. This spring semester has been nothing short of that, and this time it feels like a blessing. Considering how my past three semesters have gone, a whirlwind of grief and breakups and just trying to stay afloat, this one was always bound to feel miles better, given that I no longer had those awful things lingering in the back of my mind. However, I was widely unaware of how this would go on to affect me.
I’ve always had issues with wallowing in sadness. I’d torture myself with negative thoughts until I believed them to be true, and I’d romanticize it all because I thought that’s the only way I could find beauty in my life. Extremely dramatic, I’m aware, but it was how I loved to think. I still find myself thinking so sometimes. I do think there truly is something to be seen out of hard times, but I know now that there’s so much more waiting on the other side.
For the past few months, I’ve tried so hard to make it out of that rut I found myself in last semester. It was a particularly rough one; its entirety was spent on navigating all the gnarly parts of betrayal, wishing for the day that I’d no longer feel as poorly as I was. Until I suddenly found myself on the other side. I had spent so many days of last semester angry, sad, and overall just negative, and in the rare cases I wasn’t upset, I would just think about what new situation I could be in that would change that.
And then, without even realizing it, all of that was so far behind me, and my mind and body finally felt at peace. When that realization caught up to me, I realized that it’d been a while since I had even been in that mindset before. I believe that a lot of things got me to that point, even beyond the basics that I’d been incorporating, like eating decently and having a routine in the morning. While those simple things truly are a great starting place, I don’t think that’s what reshaped my days.
I believe that it came from simply figuring myself out. As this semester welcomed me, I had no obstacles, something I actually have never been able to experience in my college career thus far, giving me the chance to finally learn about myself. I’ve always been a fairly independent person, but it was easy to forget about all the things I knew about myself, so that I could learn about someone else.
Finding myself felt like finding a new close friend, and it’s been so nice to be able to continue learning about her. Knowing myself subtly transitioned into loving myself so seamlessly that I barely even noticed it. It was one of the days over the past few weeks, when I couldn’t remember the last time I tried to imagine bad situations, and I realized that listening to sad music stopped being about situations I could relate to.
Every now and then, a bad day still comes. Maybe it’s a cloudy day, or I can’t find motivation to do anything except lie in bed. I’ve stopped trying to wish those away, because truthfully, good days can not exist without the bad ones. When those days happen, I don’t punish myself for feeling that way. Instead, I let them happen, I give in for the day, and believe that it will disappear through the night. If it doesn’t, I know now I’m more than capable of figuring it out.