This is the first time in I-don't-know-how-many years that it's spring time and I am not miserable.

I don't know why.  I don't know what's made me feel better.  And I kind of don't care.

All I know is, I'm okay.

Not 100% okay.  Of course not. Who is?  Not 100% of the time either.  But how do I know whether or not that's normal?  Maybe there are people out there who feel consistently great.  Or content, at least.  I don't, and I'm sure nobody I know does either.

But I'm generally mostly Okay.

Isn't that wonderful?

Spring has usually been awful for me.  I hate March and April.  Spring stinks.  Literally and metaphorically.  I hate the mud, I hate the erratic weather, and I hate the fact that I don't understand my own misery.  To top it all off, I'm irritated that I seem to be alone in this. Everybody else is all ooooh spring has sprung flowers birds chirping sunshine fabric softener and I'm all screw you all you happy morons dammit whatever crap arrrgh melting dog poop rotten hay manure shut up I'm tired don't ask me why I'm crying cuz I don't know go away I hate everything.


You know how that's been going for the last three months? More like this:

Hey... You know what, it's like, halfway through March and I'm... not horribly depressed.  


Hmmm.  I wonder.  Better drugs?  Got to ride more often this winter?  The past seven years of therapy have started kicking in?  That new Big Wreck album is awesome?  


Oh well.  Doesn't matter.


I think I like Ritalin.


I don't feel like getting off my ass and going out to the barn. But I'm going to anyways.


And now that I'm in the barn I don't want to leave the horses and go back in the house.


The Pug bounds through the new grass and I smile at him as we do our daily walk around the Old Homestead. 


I sit at the dining room table with my daughter and son and we laugh together.


I'm in love.  I've got my head on his chest, his heartbeat under my ear, his big arm around my back. I've been in love with him for 25 years.   


I'm.... happy.


Oh, dear God.  


I'm actually... tentatively... cautiously... happy.


Not like it changes a whole lot, because I still don't know why I'm crying.  I suspect these days, the tears well up because I just FEEL so much.  It's so different.  I've had so many long stretches of time --since I was what, twelve? -- when I didn't feel much of anything.  At its worst, I couldn't even feel any worry over my lack of feeling.  It was blankness.  It never felt right because I'm a person who sees and smells and hears and freakin' feels every damn thing around me.  The emptiness of depression is so deep and dark.

I never want to go into that hole again but who knows, it might happen.  What I've been telling myself for the last few years is this:

IF I DO FALL INTO ANOTHER DEPRESSION, I KNOW THIS TIME AROUND THAT IT WILL NOT BE PERMANENT.


But this year?

This year, Spring 2012?

I am not miserable.  I can get out of bed and stay out of bed and get on with my day.  I can fall asleep without lying awake for hours, worrying.  I can think.  I can breathe.  There are so many things wrong with my life right now (mostly involving real estate and the location of my husband's job) but hey man, I have a life.  I have not woken up dead.  Sometimes, believe it or not, I even open my eyes and think, "Huh, look at that.  I'm alive.  Cool."

Let's not ask why or wonder how long this will last.

I just want to let it happen.