For When Your Soul Feels Heavy

By

As the sap dripping from blooming spring trees melts on your fingertips, I hope your thoughts unfold in ways they never have before.

As the wasps’ song cools through your exterior, I hope you let your soul roam past the memory of normal that still knocks at every sundown at the doorway of your perception.

As the calcium from the latte you sipped gingerly spirals in cobwebs through your bones, I hope you accept that these sweaters of comfort we layer on aren’t keeping us safe.

As you navigate this unfamiliarity—this newness that none of us were ready for—I hope you lean into the love that is brewed in silence just as much as you spring into the plethora of love grown from the piercing laughs of your friends.

I hope you recognize that everything that irks you about others is your own Achilles heel. You have this chance to finally make it right, to unearth your insecurities, to ask for help, to forgive, to care.

I hope you believe in the magic of us, in the magic of living, in the magic of boundless goodness. It exists. Maybe not always in the way we originally forecasted it to be, but it does.

I hope you trust me on this, because I believe you when you say it’s difficult to hope when the cackles and throbs beneath your lungs tug you under. I believe you when you say you try to stay grounded but your reality is like murky soap water. I believe you when you say you want to let go but the bitterness and hurt still rattle within your depth, as if someone funneled the ink from their pen through your veins.

I believe in your pain and your restlessness, but I also believe in your resilience. I believe that you will evolve through this fog. You will dream again—too vivid, uncontrolled, of old flames, of ashes from the past, of the warmth that brings you back home, of the people whose names you don’t remember anymore but who kept you safe at one point in time. You will also touch futures in the mirror you face every morning as the toothbrush glides across the bony surfaces of your teeth. I hope you believe me. But more so, I hope you believe in you, that you can take another step.

And I hope that as you take these steps, you find a balance between living for the future and living now with hopes for the future. For only in the present, we can still notice all the individual pieces, all the connections, all that we still have, all that we can be thankful for.