Hello... spring...

[razielim]

My brain is doing this bizarre thing where it was a lovely, unseasonably warm and spring-like 51 degrees outside at sunrise, and when we (my brain and I) stuck our nose out there and breathed it in, savoring that bouquet of coming rains and flowers, we thought “Ah, smells like quarantine. This is just like that magical March 2020 smell when flowers were blooming and I switched from carefully studying perspective to binge-playing Pocket Camp. Maybe I should go reinstall Pocket Camp and do that instead of paint this morning. Man, I miss quarantine. Real quarantine. Simpler times. Chocolate mousse cake. Watching the backyard come back to life while journaling. Cherry blossom petals floating past the deck from the neighbor’s yard. Fresh strawberries cut up into floral gin and tonics. Eggs over easy with savory pancakes every morning. Cute little decoration game where Isabelle would actually sit outside and read under a tree instead of working all the time. Nowhere to go and nowhere to be. Spring lasted forever that year, and it was magical.”

Except that whole associative process round-house kicked me straight in the face all at once in a split second and I’m still reeling, horrified to discover, and unwilling to believe that this pack of nostalgic propaganda is what the first smell of spring brings up for me now.

I recognize that I made a special effort to not be miserable that spring, but I never accounted for the lingering fondness I would accidentally set myself up for. My first impulse is to have an even better spring, to rewire "spring” as far away from “quarantine” as possible, preferably without as much gin, sweets, and underwhelming freemium gaming, but frankly I’m terrified of ever having a good time ever again because at this point who knows how it’ll turn out in retrospect.

Comments

[yarnofariadne]

I completely, completely share that feeling. Gin and all.

[razielim]

That actually makes me feel a little more human and less monstrous. Maybe it's a common thing many of us are going through.

[spiralicious]

I think this is a fairly common thing. "Nostalgic propaganda" seems to be a common coping mechanism. I've been slightly horrified at how nostalgically I've been looking at the job I had pre-pandemic, despite the fact that, in reality, it was eating at my mental health and the only reason I hadn't quit earlier was that I was counting down the days until it would reach it's natural end at that point (and guilt).