Everything feels different, and at the same time, everything feels the same.

Years ago, I remember crouching down on my floor attempting to start yet another diary. This was back when we had just moved in with my grandparents, before the dementia, before my mother had to take care of everything in a way she wasn’t really prepared to and still really isn’t. I had the window open, and spring was unraveling itself. That smell of damp fertile earth crawling through the window on the back of a frosty breeze. I have cried stupid hollow tears over so many diaries. Self-pitying tears. I can’t say they weren’t warranted considering how sad and stupid my life has been at times. Spring has always been a sort of delayed New Year’s for me. Springs feels like the season in which the year actually wakes up. January has always sort of felt like the year is hitting the snooze button and we are insisting on dragging it out of bed anyway.

I vividly remember this moment, even though I can’t precisely tell you what year it was, or how old I was, or what I was attempting to write. I just remember the smell of spring in my room. That this was early enough in our move that I lived in an unruly mess of my childhood belongings. There were three television sets in my room, each one about as old as I was. I lived in a shrine to each home I had before the one I had moved into. Something about sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor of my hoarded bedroom, feeling the change of seasons announce its presence as clearly as it ever had, sticks with me to this day.

I’m 27 years old now. Most days I feel more like myself than I ever have. Some days I still feel like the frightened teenager I was, desperate to crawl out of my skin, even though I didn’t particularly want lodging in any other skin in particular. I’m living the happiest time of my life, so far, in the midst of a pandemic. I don’t know what to make of this time. I know it’ll be something wild to look back at one day.