I miss my blankets

12 years ago today, I left Rhode Island and moved to California; four weeks after getting offered the job, and one week before starting it. I remember the day well, beginning with my friend driving me to Logan Airport, and ending in a mad rush to get some things for me and my cat into the home I had rented for us. Our things wouldn't arrive for a few more days. 

 My first foray into community living. Now that I think about it, that first apartment I rented was quiet, even the next one, living under Kevin (aside from his midnight activity with a friend that moved his bed back and forth over the ceiling above me).  

 I miss the blanket of winter. For a person who thrives in solitude, it becomes a sanctuary where all are stashed away in their own homes hiding from the cold. The blanket of snow further deadens the noise of this world. My weighted blanket adds a force to my body it rarely encounters, weight, pressure, touch, safety.  

Winter- there I can feel the pressures of the day ending early as the sun goes down. Permission to rest, Sir.  

I traverse the wet and slippery grounds alone and bravely embed myself in the harsh air and frozen ground.

My inner angst is allowed to sit with me at the table, permitted to be present in this winter season.  

Summer forces it to hide. How can you be depressed on such a glorious day, the world asks. As if war, poverty and real-life abandonment no longer exist.  

Now, as the slightest rise in temperature occurs, we think 50° is hot, I am instantly bombarded by the aggressive air conditioning at my neighbor's side. It comes at me from all sides and my sanctuary is torn without my say, without any preparation.  

And the trucks come out, readying to tear up roads and grounds to build and prepare, and the violence of chain saws and leaf blowers and lawn mowers. Neighbors come out of their doors in droves; people I have never seen before, thawing out their frozen corpses loudly and without reservation, as if they have a right to trod on the sacred ground they once abandoned for the warmth inside.  

And the few weeks I had when I could open my window and hear the birds singing and the crickets chirp, and that one, oh so magical afternoon, when I could hear the rain gently tapping on the leaves, are stolen from me. Distant memories I will yearn for for the next seven months to return. 

 I am sad in this arriving of my favorite season because it means the loss of the sacred and quiet spaces. I am forced to extrovert while my introvert nature struggles with the cacophony of noise as the world returns to life.  

I pray for acceptance and synthesis, peace and stillness in the face of all this aggression, and comfort for the loss of my private spaces with you.

There is no solitude any longer.