It dawned upon me that the word for face in Thai is the same as the word season, and the same as the word for describing a feeling: nâa, son jai. Nâa glua. Nâa nǒw.

I don’t know if that’s exactly precise or not, tonally, but I can make sense of putting on an expression and calling it a feeling, or giving a season a face.

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When I think about the faces my seasons have worn, I think about the faces I have put on throughout my life. The lives I have lived. I’ve been a gardener, a competitive powerlifter, a helper, a crutch, and a hindrance.

In my youth, I had a season of adventure where I wore a face called Fearless, ready to embrace the world, and waking up at dawn and walking miles to make mud bricks in Liberia. There was some mundane life in there, but that was 8 or 9 months of Real Adventure. Eat, Pray, Love plus A Walk to Remember minus the divorce and the terminal illness.

The Lost in the World face, during a season of feeling alone and rejected in the wake of heartbreak. And funny enough, I have never used the term “heartbreak” to describe my own love life, as I made a vow to myself 15 years ago that I would never get my heart broken, and instead must be the one to do the breaking. But years of being lost led to so much pain and brokenness and it is heartbreaking to be the one who does the breaking; even if you think it won’t, it will leave you with a broken heart.

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It feels like a relief to realize and express that, and I can feel my body dumping the emotion. My daughter is sitting on my lap, and it feels like I could collapse. One less emotion to be in denial of.

I remember the first time I expressed the feeling of disappointment. I was doing some kind of transcendental meditation and I was trying to name the the feeling that was blocking my space. It felt too simple to just be disappointed, but I found myself thinking things like, “I’m disappointed that my brother died. I’m disappointed that I hurt That Person in That Way. I’m disappointed,” and it turns out disappointment is a profound experience of its own. Even now, years later, I’m flooded with relief, acknowledging the disappointment in my space, years and years later.

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I’m trying to hold my tongue as my four year old dances around with my nutcracker collection and sings his made up songs and tries to coax his sister into letting him pinch her pointer finger in the soldier’s wooden teeth. In this season, my face is Perpetual Vacancy.

When I’m not medicating with coffee and wasabi peas, I’m medicating with Candace Owens and an indica, and I think they both do about the same for the mood in the house.

Everyone medicates with something, whether it’s scrolling or scripture or sour candy, and frankly, there’s a vice for every season. I’d like to be a person whose wellbeing comes from early mornings and recitations of psalms, but maybe that will be a later season. For now, I’ll just have another pineapple jam biscuit.

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In this season, I’ve fallen in love with hanging the laundry out to dry, and that feels like growth because I never thought I would ever love anything having to do with laundry.

But what I need, is a splash. I need to outrun my skin. I need to dangle on the face of a rock.

In Spain, I self-medicated with cold plunges and swims and saltwater floats and wave jumping, along the coastline of the Basque Country. I wanted to be better for my family, a day at a time, and I was practicing very basic stewardship things like staying on top of the laundry cycle (at which I miserably failed), and using the groceries we bought, and mending, and budgeting. I grew a lot there, too, but renting a flat with an ocean view wasn’t freedom.

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We’re reading Pilgrim’s Progress (another exercise in virtue in the virtue of finishing what I start, and in fact, Pilgrim’s Progress is one of many books that I’ve begun and abandoned somewhere along the way) and we have the goal of finishing it before we go home for Christmas. I have a pair of jammies to mend, and bags to pack. We put up Christmas decorations. We know we’re not staying here, and we’d rather skip through this part, pause during the visit home, and then fast forward until spring.

But part of our journey and part of our practice, is being where we are. Enjoying what we can, and letting the story unfold instead of rushing to the next act.

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Right now, we’re in a Clifford season. A cold season, a dry season. Watermelon season and gooseberry season. We’re in Nutcracker season, and preparation season. We have holidays to celebrate. We have friends and families to visit. We have bikes to ride and pools to cannonball into and curtains to make.

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I used to like to watch Dead Poet Society and it would make me ache with yearning for freedom and independence. I wanted to suck the marrow out of life. I wanted every last bit of succulence. Blue skies and car rides. I daydreamed of splashing into natural pools (but somehow managed to skip the butterflies of the jump), and camping in wildflower meadows. I wanted to see the twinkle in a stranger’s eyes, but neglected relationships with friends and family.

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You could pick pieces of my story and decide that That Girl has really figured out what it means to suck the marrow out of life, but I would call it Hardly Even a Real Adventure. Being the one who has lived it, along with the help of a few more, it’s felt stagnant and stale and at some times bitter and for much of the time, has felt like it is withering away. Like the essence of our life has been wasted. But we’ve been busy packing and moving and buying houses and starting businesses and doing whatever other Serious Things we can think of and calibrating our lives through the lens of God’s Will and I just wonder if it’s all so serious after all.

Maybe it’s not, and maybe I should leave the Serious Things to the Serious People, one of whom I am not.

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My daughter lays next to me, and she is a force to be reckoned with.

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A few days ago I decided to practice smiling and it felt like an epiphany when I realized it’s okay to be happy about the moon and how little bodies run with all their might to chase birds away.

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I don’t have a way yet to tie all of this together, but I’m thankful that I’m not the person I was ten years ago, or even seven. But I miss the person I was, thirteen or fourteen years ago. Was the Real Adventure just a season? Was the Fearless face just a mask? Did my spirit wither, paralyzed by fear on the face of a rock or indecisive at the edge of a cliff? Did the marrow dry up while I was busy being lost? Or did it dry up while I was pacing in circles, trying to prove how Serious I am?

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Both kids are sleeping now. I love them more than anything, and the last thing I would want is for them to become the person I’ve become: hollow, indifferent, indecisive. Afraid to jump, or afraid to make a splash.

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