By: Gabriela Yareliz
Spring arrives on March 20. I love spring. It always arrives right on time— when winter has beat us up and left us in a heaping pile like the inches of snow dropped on us.
Friday was exhausting. It was exacerbated by the anxiety that loomed over me when I realized I had missed my window to do laundry. It haunted me for 24 hours. The tension from the week came tumbling out on the mat. I can’t say I have cried often during a workout, but there is something that gets triggered when you expand the hips. It’s like something unlocks. If you have experienced it, you know. The pelvis holds so much emotion.
This past weekend, a matcha and a bad mood hit me out of nowhere like an electric shock. That night, I couldn’t fall asleep, and I stared through the blinds at the blinding grey light as the snow continued to fall. My bad mood propelled me to finish a book that had been dragging me along. Sometimes, we need to punctuate things. I had liked the book when I started it, but by page 400– I was like, this could have been an email.
My mind stayed racing for hours. (Don’t drink caffeine during your luteal phase— or if you are me, don’t drink caffeine— ever).
I am now reading a book about Eve Babitz and Joan Didion. (I like it!) There is something that always intrigues me about the 60s and 70s. The pivot from the 50s to those two decades feels like such a flip of a switch— sort of like my mood that night. Sort of like the seasons.
The next day, I waded out of my swampy habitation, and decided connection was better. Slow was ok. The flawed nature of it all (and my own flaws) shouldn’t make me sharp like the ice outside but should make me soften like water. It was time to melt.
I recently heard a wise Italian say that, at times, what we need is to say that some seed of a mood inside of us won’t take root. We acknowledge it, and we pluck it up like a bird would and throw it out of the garden. Spring reminds us of the green that starts poking out of the ground. The new. The soft. The colorful. The watered. The pruned.
The resilient.
GABRIELA YARELIZ 