What is Past, Or Passing, Or To Come*

This time of year makes me antsy.

I think that perhaps everyone (at least, everyone who lives in a place where the winter tends to linger on like a horrid houseguest) gets a bit stir crazy in the early spring, when the world is caught between cold and warm, and you want to go outside and run around and be a little nutty but the ground is still pretty much frozen and there's a good chance that it might actually snow at least one more time. It's only natural to want to raise your face to the sky and feel the warm sun on your skin.

I want that too -- the gamboling about in the warmer air -- but that's not what I mean by antsy. I should have said that this time of year makes me anxious. April into May has not, traditionally, been a very good time for me. Yeats wrote that "things fall apart/ The center cannot hold" and for me, when things finally come as unglued as they can, as finally as they can, this is when they have done it.

Some days -- most days, many days -- I am fine. Other days I feel like McGyver, trying to build a framework of emotional stability out of  a book of matches, a piece of gum, and a bicycle spoke before everything falls completely apart.

And so I feel anxious -- and yet, at the same time, this year I actually feel very healthy, which paradoxically might be making me more anxious, as though I have new legs and I've learned to stand and walk on them, but I'm treading on an unfamiliar surface and so, not wanting to fall, I take every step with exceptional caution; it's an exhausting way to walk, pondering every potential step and constantly checking for hidden dangers. (Which is, in and of itself, an exercise in folly because being hidden means that you WON'T be able to see them, doesn't it?)

I keep reminding myself that, if I should fall down, I have a choice. I can stay down, in the dirt and the grit, or I can get back up. I can try to do it on my own, or I can also ask for some help. I have plenty of people who will offer me a strong, warm hand. (And I also know that I LIKE being upright -- the view is much better from here.)

Still. Antsy.

Perhaps a much needed vacation will help.

*From "Sailing to Byzantium" by WB Yeats. One of my personal favorites. :)