Reflections on an Equinox

Photographer: Aneta Ivanova

This season has been one of seismic shifts and also agonizing stagnancy. My muscles have torn from the bone, my family has been thrown to opposite ends of the world, we have swam in the darkest depths of the mind, and held weights so crushing you'd never think you could bear them until you just do. My brain has flitted from the stratosphere to the very core of my being (where the door is still mostly closed -- but unlocked!), my cells have literally attacked each other because they don't know who the enemy is and who is safe, my heart has cracked open wide, and yet still -- here I am.

And what a beautiful gift, to be served up so much persistent hardship that it sticks around long enough to morph into the vessel of its own demise - the wall becomes the wrecking ball, the ice becomes the pick, the thick mud becomes the plough, the absolutely unpredictable, unfair, unimaginable shit becomes the life altering circumstance that shifts your view of the world, and of yourself.

I don't know much, but what I do know for certain is that humanness that our world is so worried has been lost is still very much here. I know this because if I dig around in my pain, if I press where it hurts, my eyes open wider. My heart bleeds with empathy and my lungs expand with an understanding and an undying hope that in these ashes we are born.

How is it that in the midst of so much hurt I can still experience sweetness? That I have been given arms that are capable of holding an eternal heaviness but also of suspending space and time, twirling above my head as light as a feather, floating on the wind and the whims of my ageless soul?

I'm baffled every time I see a sunset because the end is so beautiful.

I never thought that it would be when the school gates close and after the diplomas are handed out that I begin to learn all of the lessons. But I have taken more notes, digested more information that is seemingly impossible to process, highlighted and underlined and crossed out and erased and rewritten and earmarked more moments of my life in the past two years than I ever did as a student sat at my desk.

We are made for dualities.

The both, and.

The moment when the Sun crosses the celestial equator and everything is perfectly in line, for a fleeting moment, suspended between summer and fall. The limbo in between the seasons where it's too cold for a T-shirt but too warm for a coat. The light is lingering, we still meet for drinks outside cafes in the evenings but then the sun dips earlier than expected and the goosebumps on our arms hurry the conversation along.

And I sit here, alone, watching the sky turn pink and fade to black. And then the Moon, she is full, she is bright, she is strong, she is resolute. And I realize, I am not afraid of endings. In this emptiness I am waxing, not waning. 

In my darkest hours I've been ripped so far apart that finally there is space for the light to come through.

And this, I hope I never forget. I hope I never let fear dominate the narrative that love so deeply wants to fill.

xx mm