April at the Door

Day 121 – March 24, 2026

I can feel April standing at the door.

Not literally, obviously. If the months start developing physical bodies and showing up at my apartment unannounced, then I have significantly bigger problems than healing.

But still. I can feel the threshold.

That specific kind of shift where one season is almost over and another hasn’t quite stepped in yet. The air changes first. Then the light. Then something in your body starts acting like it knows before your mind does. Like some old instinct is lifting its head and saying, pay attention, something is moving again.

I felt that today. And it made me think about how much of life is threshold. Not arrival. Not completion. Not the clean, satisfying moment where the lesson lands and the camera cuts and the audience knows exactly what changed.

Threshold.

The place between who you were and who you are becoming. The place between winter and spring. The place between fear running the whole house and you quietly changing the locks. The place between surviving something and realizing survival was not, in fact, the end of your personality.

That last one matters to me.

Because I think for a while I was afraid the aftermath would flatten me. That if I kept living inside everything I’ve lived through, I would eventually become some more muted version of myself. Less curious. Less funny. Less dangerous. Less soft. Less me. More functional, maybe, but dimmer.

That fear was real.

And now here I am, with April standing somewhere just outside the frame, and I realize something else is happening instead.

I am not dimmer. I am denser. Richer. Sharper. More exact. More emotionally expensive, yes, but also more real. And there is something almost thrilling about that.

Not because pain improved me. I refuse that narrative. Some things are just terrible and deserve to stay terrible. But surviving them without becoming flatter? Surviving them and still wanting beauty, language, tenderness, laughter, sexiness, intelligence, spring air, and a life that feels like it actually belongs to me?

That is something. That is worth paying attention to.

Today I thought a lot about what I want this next stretch of life to feel like. Not just look like. Feel like. That question keeps stalking me in increasingly well dressed forms.

I know I want more room. More beauty. More truth. More pleasure without apology. More clarity. Less pretending. Less shrinking. Less of that old feminine instinct to explain myself into acceptability before anyone else has even decided whether they deserve access to my interior world.

No.

April can come find me as I am.

Alive. Complicated. Still angry in some places. Still heartbroken in others. Still funny enough to survive my own thoughts. Still sweet, but significantly harder to mishandle than before.

That feels right.

Roger, of course, is entirely ready for spring in the way only a dog can be. No unresolved symbolism, no internal metaphors, just full bodied enthusiasm and a suspicious belief that warmer weather means more opportunities for snacks and theatrical backyard behavior.

His priorities remain spiritually sound.

And maybe that’s part of the lesson of thresholds too. You do not always have to understand every shift in order to meet it. Sometimes you just have to notice it. Stand there honestly and let the new season find you with your eyes open.

That is enough for now.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And April at the door, while I stand here becoming something brighter and much less manageable.