May Day

May 1st. Thursday.

I don't think that I have ever been happier to see the dawn of a new month. Ever. In my life.

April was a fickle fiend, a brutal beast. A month where I felt the highest of highs, and experienced the lowest of lows. A month where at times I felt elation, meaning and purpose, and at others I felt my faith desert me, and I despaired of ever finding it again. It was a month of happiness and excitement, of sadness and of tears. A month of family and celebration, and of loneliness and fear. 

You may have noticed that I wasn't around here much in April. It was because I was stuck on a roller-coaster of emotion, and all the words that I would have written seemed to get stuck somewhere between my head and my hands. And there they remain.

One day I will tell the story of April. One day, when the words come easily and the feelings aren't quite so close to the surface, I will write about it all and post it here, where I sort through my thoughts and collect my memories. Because I know that this month is one that I won't want to forget, but also one that I am not quite ready to remember. One day I will gather up all of the half written posts and the fragmented sentences that litter my drafts folder, and I will form them into paragraphs and I will share these past weeks. One day. Hopefully soon. Because I believe with my whole heart that it is important to tell our stories. Even the ones that are hard. Maybe especially those.

Yesterday, on the last day of April, it rained. All day. Not a soft and kind drizzle, but a hard and unforgiving rain. The kind that never lets up and soaks everything that deigns to challenge it. It seemed a fitting last day of a tumultuous month and I did the same thing I have been doing every day. I gathered my boots and my umbrella, put my head down, and forged on, through the rain and wind and cold.

It was still raining when I got home. I was looking forward to sweat pants, dinner, couch and TV, but the last day of April had other plans. I walked into my house to a puddle on the kitchen floor from an until-then-undiscovered roof leak and a puddle on the basement floor from water seeping in through one of the walls. 

And after I recovered from my shock, all I could do was laugh at the utter ridiculousness of it all.

May 1. Thursday.

It wasn't raining when I woke up this morning. The sky was still grey and my neighborhood was engulfed in a layer of fog, but the rain had stopped. I got dressed feeling a little lighter, a little happier than I had in days, and walked out of the house, leaving my umbrella and rain boots behind. By the time I got to work the roof leak was in the process of being fixed thanks to my gorgeous man who sprang directly into action, there was a plan for the basement, and the sun was starting to peak out from behind the clouds.

And with that warmth on my face I walked into this new month, where there are surely brighter days ahead.