October and April

There's a song I heard when I lived in Kolobrzeg.  It's called "October and April" by The Rasmus.  The song is a duet, illuminating two worlds that have come together - dark and light, cold and warm, hate and love, October and April.  I was at one of my favorite cafe's when I first heard the song over the radio.  I wrote down the lyrics I heard and promptly forgot about it.  Until one day, while reading through my journals from living in Poland, I came across the lyrics scratched quickly on an otherwise blank page.  I looked up the song and found it almost immediately.  (For a video of the song, click here.)

When I listened to the song again, I realized how accurate it was.  Not just in the fated love sense, but in the true to life sense.  When I arrived in Poland, I had no idea how much it would poison me.  It would become a disease that took over my body.  It would become something I had no control over.  I would have to let it run its course before it would subside and ease off into something that would come and go every now and again.  The more I thought about Poland, the more extreme the symptoms would be.  And sometimes, I didn't even need to be consciously thinking about Poland.  It would just come.

This is how the disease would eventually play itself out in my life:  I would be at a store by myself, shopping for groceries and I would see a jar of sauerkraut or beets or fresh carrots or a roll of paper towels or I would smell the fresh scent of rain or taste the freshness of winter or feel a chill run through my body.  I would have to close my eyes and take a deep breath.  I could feel the disease come back full force.  My heart would pound, my hands would grope for something--anything--to hold onto, and my eyes would mist.  When the pounding of my heart eased off, it would then begin to ache.  I would put a fist on my chest and will my heart to stop aching, to stop squeezing itself into oblivion, to stop making me feel so much at one time.

The symptoms would never have a typical time-frame.  They would come and go as quickly as they had come, or they would stay and linger until I was forced to think of a moment of terrible sadness I experienced while in Poland.  I would have to give my feelings meaning - a cause to feel the way I was feeling.  Only then would the ache cease and my normal heart rhythm commence.

I tried to find a cure for this disease.  I attempted to concoct natural remedies to the way I felt when the symptoms came, but they never lasted long enough.  I tried talking about how I felt, but after I finished talking, the weight of additional thoughts would weigh me down and the disease would cling to me--hanging on for dear life.

And then I stopped.

I stopped trying to make the disease go away.  Instead, I tried finding ways to turn the sad feelings into something I could cope with.  When the feelings came, I forced my mouth into a sad smile, and allowed myself to feel.  Everything.  Whatever feelings came, I felt them--then and there.

I felt.

Even if I was at the grocery store and I ended up standing in the middle of the aisle, holding a jar of sauerkraut, and laughing.