Every day I am strange to myself, like something turns in the night while I am dreaming the way grass, by dawn, looks slightly different with its crown of dew, its new bends and clusters.
Some days—like yesterday, on the Buck Moon—the change is a nameless ache. I have gone through it enough times to recognize its shape: unbeckoned, heavy on the limbs, lingering like a long cold. A melancholia without cause. I’m like a werewolf of sadness, I joked to Michael. It just happens.
I think of these instances as my spirit catching a fever; a struggle between the within and without that must run its full course. By then, something will have transformed. The crossroads I probably do not know I am in will soon make itself clear as long as I let this feeling pass unhindered. All weekend I sat with myself, nauseous and aching, even as I pushed myself to follow my routine. This is a humbling reminder that I am not a machine, and that despite systems and habits, I am an organic, mysterious being—mysterious even to myself.
The stereotype about women being moody, fickle, and unpredictable is not lost on me. It is amusing that I happen to be a woman who is moody, fickle, and, to a degree, unpredictable. (Many men are too, absent the self-awareness, to our collective woe.) This feminine principle of chaos, this yin that exists in everything and everyone, has often been deemed unimportant despite its obvious necessity, so tonight I hold my womanhood close and allow it to breathe without judgment. “Fickle and changeable / though I may always be.” I expect it will be different again tomorrow. Meet me then.