it gets better.

You know you are tired when you are already in bed, ready to sleep, and oh, look: so’s your scarf. Like, still around your neck. And huh, your legs are wrapped up all tight in the same spandex pants you danced in all evening.

Yes, spandex pants.

And I’m still wearing my cardigan sweater and denim shirt.

Good thing I mentioned the spandex pants, or else you might just wonder if you had accidentally stumbled upon Mr. Rogers’ blog, what with the cardigan sweater and denim shirt and scarf and stuff. I should just change my shoes and speak to a small trolley and then there’d hardly be any difference between the two of us at all.

Other than the spandex pants, I guess.

Which means that I am just one pair of spandex pants away from being Mr. Rogers. As my friend John would say, there have been a heckuva lot of firsts for me this past year. What’s one more?

Have you heard of the It Gets Better campaign? It’s basically an encouraging message for LGBT youth who are treated as outcasts in their schools and rejected from mainstream society. It’s trying to convey to them that life isn’t hopeless and that there is reason to remain alive–otherwise, you’d miss what’s up ahead. And apparently, that’s better.

Well, tonight my mom told me it gets better. She said it with confidence, too. She said it like it was as simple as springtime; like how the seasons have to come, because it’s just what happens. I want to believe her. Sometimes I do, and it’s the kind of fresh air that shut-ins must gulp when they are taken by some kind soul to the sea. When they are taken to a place that has no doors. None whatsoever. None to slam, none to say no, none to draw the line that separates where you are and where you cannot be.

I was in a winterwonderland this weekend. It was snow and snow and still more snow for as far as the eye could see. It was hard to imagine that the same land I was walking on would ever not be covered in snow. But while I was walking, I had this thought that spring would come here, too. And it surprised me. And then I imagined warmth and flowers and that surprised me, too, because it was so divergent from what I was seeing.

And please don’t misunderstand me. I love wintertime. I wouldn’t want to miss this season, ever. But, this fledgling February feels extra cold. The trees and I share a camaraderie; we are all stripped and bare and yet still standing. And springtime speaks to me of change. And right now? Change feels better. And I’d like very much to believe that it gets better. Though not in a way that would wish winter from here. I just like to think that now isn’t forever. That there are places without any doors and the horizon–that once friendly kind of beckoning entity–can be something like that once again.