Seasons of Emotions

I don’t ridicule the sky when it rains.

Though there may have been sunshine the previous days, I don’t look into oncoming gray clouds with disgust. I don’t condemn the first raindrop that falls from the swollen sky, I don’t curse the lightning when it illuminates the city as brightly as the moon does during the night.

I understand the Earth and her natural rhythms, we are taught the four seasons at a young age in school, we make art projects when we’re learning about weather where we color in clouds onto a blank sheet of paper, where a small sun shines brightly in the corner. I learned at a young age that not everyday would be the same, and this is a concept deeply ingrained, yet I have difficulty applying it to my own emotions.

I have difficulty accepting the crash after feeling on top of the world. I will become comfortable in the sunshine of contentment, of optimism, and it will feel like all of the emotions I had prior to what I feel in the moment are so far away. It genuinely feels like I have reached the point in emotional height where I am able to touch the clouds, and I’m able to bask in the opportunity because I remember what it felt like to be below the surface of the ground. I understand the rise after the fall, that is easy to shift into. It’s the fall after the rise that hits me the hardest, it’s that feeling that I haven’t quite learned to accept though I know that my emotions have seasons just as the Earth shifts from summer into fall.

It’s hard to make space for sadness again after you have felt it leave after years of being tormented by its company. I had gotten used to it being near, never out of reach even if I felt okay for the moment. I was used to it being one misstep, one offensive word, one rejection away. We had become something like companions in the years that it floated with me like an alive shadow, something like a symbiotic relationship where it had plenty to feed from but I was always left empty. It had become a part of me.

After years of constant thunderstorms and rain, when the sun began to peak through from behind the clouds and began coming clear into view, it’s like I convinced myself that the rainy days were over. It had been so long since I felt warmth like that, probably the first time, and I thought that now that I had gotten here, to the moment where I felt more than okay, I would never again be in emotional spaces where things would feel how they once did. I didn’t consider clouds on the horizon of the blue sky, I didn’t anticipate anymore destructive lightning that would illuminate the sky.

My expectations had been wrong.

I understand the rhythm of the Earth. I accept that it can be sunny the day after it rains and that it can storm after a cool, calm day. I accept this externally, but I have not quite found the acceptance within me. I see the clouds coming over the horizon of my emotions and I feel disappointed to see them, unsure of what to do, where exactly to drop my anchor so I’m not swept away in the coming current. I scramble to find my compass, to find my map so I can figure things out but I am reluctant to ask for a helping hand.

I put on a brave face because I have been in these storms before, but that doesn’t promise that I won’t get lost. It’s so easy to get lost in sadness when it presents itself to us, just as easy as it is to become high on happiness when we are feeling it run through us. It’s so easy to accept happiness, but it’s hard to accept the sadness.

I am still learning how to sit in my own rain. I am still learning how to trust that my inner clouds don’t last forever, and to relax into them when they appear. I am still learning to remember that the flowers don’t bloom if there isn’t water to help them grow. I am still learning that just like Earth’s weather, my emotions will go through ebbs and flows.