why does my favorite season feel so daunting?

Every year, March feels a lot like breathing in fresh air and absorbing the past into my bloodstream. When the clock moves backwards and the days feel longer, I feel my soul re-enter my body and warm sparks of life course through my veins. The cold darkness of dreary December that lingers through the first few months of the year makes it so difficult to feel renewed when it hits midnight on January 1st.

I learn how to fight back more each year. Being in college has taught me a lot about growth, and I feel more free than before. But there’s something about this season that is so mismatched with its intention. The sun on my skin never stops feeling so good and I always feel warmer in the pit of my chest. Amidst the feelings of rejuvenation are ones of preemptive grief for a chapter of my life coming to a close. Being a student for nearly the entire span of my existence makes it difficult to see December as an ending point, and as a future educator, I know the academic year will only continue to be a more thorough representation of the journeys I take.

With spring juries approaching, I feel urgency creep up on me. I’m running out of time and springtime warmth will escape me soon enough. More pitches and rhythms and texts to memorize only to be tossed into the discard pile with last semester’s PDF files in a month’s time. Pinching the pages of this semester’s chapter between my fingers, I think of how much can change in such a small amount of time. I remember picking one of my French art songs in January because it reminded me of someone, and as time has progressed through, I realize I have to scramble to find a new muse.

And this concept of a new beginning seems fleeting. I feel as though I turn over a new leaf with each step I take, crouching down on the sidewalk to twirl the stems between my finger and my thumb. I’ve worked so hard these past few months, I’m clutching the benefits tightly in the palms of my hands, and I can only pray that things continue to stay this way. Am I deserving of all this praise, or is there some false plastic layer of film covering my professors’ eyes? As chapters whisk by, what will come of these relationships? Most will say that only time can tell. So I just lay myself in the grass and wait.

This semester I’m in my first ever opera production. I’m still figuring out what I want to do with my life. I leave rehearsal twice a week to see that the sun is still high in the sky at six o’clock, and I remember that this is fun. My voice is personal to me but in a way that my colleagues don’t understand. There’s a slight uncertainty around my comfort with making my career centered around my voice. Training to be a classical soprano without any countertenor or falsetto labels attached is hard when you identify as a man. I’ve recently discovered a passion for writing about music that seemed to be hidden inside new soil, and maybe this spring is helping me realize that my love for the human voice means nothing in the grand scheme of transgenderism.

My favorite of Beethoven’s symphonies has been his sixth for as long as I can remember. The “Pastoral” symphony, as it’s often called, is such a pure and soaring embodiment of springtime with strings and woodwinds intertwining together in breezes. I recently found it on vinyl for only a few dollars in my favorite record store in Jacksonville, and it felt like a kiss on the forehead from the universe. Every time I listen to it, I’m reminded of the escape that nature provides. Taking a nap with the dorm window open and falling asleep to the sweet sounds of the rustling trees outside, sitting on a bench by the lake on campus and pushing my shoes into the dirt, among other simple joys of the season. Beethoven reminds me of the gentleness of our favorite season, and I’m almost certain that he wouldn’t want me to dwell on all the chaos that is being in music school.

Despite everything, the Earth welcomes a reborn version of me with outstretched arms as it gains a layer of thick grasses once again. Her music is kind and reliable, and it resurfaces every year without fail. I know she will always keep me wrapped in a secure embrace. I know I need to learn to trust that nearing the end of a chapter doesn’t have to be so frightening.