The longest night

Solstice.
I can't sleep.
I suppose if you're going to be awake all night, the solstice is the night to do it. Longest night of the year. The turning point of the season. The night our ancestors spent in songs and stories and prayers, hoping to bring back the light. It's a good night to be up late, thinking.

So I went back through the blog and looked up Solstice for last year. A very different time. No one could have told me the changes that would occur in one journey of the earth around our sun. And now I find I am in a place from which I cannot see where I will be one year from now. Not clearly. Not yet. I'm like those ancient ancestors, watching and waiting through the strange darkness for the return of the sun.

Yet we know that the spring comes, the sun returns. The earth will circle this way again. There is a sort of peace in pacing through the processes of change. From a known place to a place of chaos and out again into something new. And I believe in that. I believe that change is good and inevitable and that ultimately, we thrive on it. Ultimately, it is what makes life worth living - the thrill of "what happens next."

I recognize chaos in my life right now. I seem incapable of maintaining routines or keeping focus. I am a walking contradiction, fully feeling two completely incompatible ways at one time: Grief and elation, terrible self doubt and a sense of strength and surety stronger than any I have felt in a long time. You can't maintain those kinds of contradictions, but I believe they are all part of the change and you can't struggle against them, either. You can't try to make anything make sense. You just have to roll with it.

So, I light my candle and believe in the return of the sun. Though it's still cold and the most bitter part of winter may still be ahead, the days are getting longer, and spring is on the way.

Just two more days of work before the Christmas break. I'm ready for some down time. I've not been worth shooting at work for a couple of weeks. I want to just remove my brain from the museum and the responsible grown-up world for awhile and go ahead and immerse myself in the weirdness that is my personal life right now. I want to watch eleven hours of Teen Titans with Grayson and eat pizza on the sofa. I want to make dinner with friends and talk and talk and talk until I lose my voice. I want to sleep all afternoon. I want to go out and drink too much and laugh too loud and tell everyone I love them. I want to listen to music and do nothing else at all. All that stuff and more. Stuff I haven't done in a long time. Stuff I've never done but always meant to.

It's all part of finding out what happens next.

Spring is coming. Have faith.