If you’re like me (and no one is, not now, not really), you step outside and thoughts run through your head going ninety miles per hour and you stagger a bit, because WHAM!—it’s like getting hit head-on by a speeding train, having all those thoughts at once, you know? And if you’re like me (I bet you’re not), you just have to stand there and breathe in for a minute, and sort through your thoughts—like when your little cousin, on the beaches of Florida, brings you a plastic bucket full of seashore junk and you have to dig through it to find those few beautiful seashells that you know, you just KNOW are in there, because how would you survive if they weren’t?—anyway, you’re sorting. You’re sorting through these thoughts (that is, if you’re like me, and I’m sure you're not) and searching for one that makes any form of sense, for one that’s even translatable into words, because some thoughts just aren’t, you know—some thoughts are just meant to stay in the inside-your-head language that no one else understands. So you find one, and you clutch it like you’re drowning in the great Pacific Ocean (which I have never seen, although I hear it’s vast and blue and very, very wet) and it’s the only lifeline and it’s just floating out of reach and you’re sinking, sinking and then you grab it and suddenly you’re on dry land, gasping for breath but joyous in the knowledge that you did it. You didn’t drown in the ocean of water or in the ocean of thoughts. And when you’ve found this lifeline thought (if you’re like me, and I’ve yet to find someone who is) you inspect it, looking for faults—like when you see a movie with a new actor or actress and you scrutinize every aspect of their existence, seeking anything and everything that you can criticize, his funny-looking face or her weirdly shaped nose or his awful fake British accent or her strange high-pitched voice—anyway, you’re looking for faults. And you find (almost) every one and fix them up—like the night before your first mixer in sixth grade when you and all your friends went over to your other friend’s house and spent hours fixing each other’s clothes and hair and makeup and attitude until you considered yourselves positively gorgeous—anyway, you’ve fixed all the faults. And then, if you’re like me (now, really, don’t pretend—I know you're not) you sigh a little, just a little, not in a sad way but in a my-lifeline-thought-is-ready way, and you turn to that one person who stands beside you, the one who’s always stood beside you, through thick and thin, hard and easy, chocolate and vanilla. That one person who you think might be just a little bit like you, because who else would put up with your craziness except a kindred spirit like that?—and you give your seashell, lifeline, movie star, night-before-the-first-sixth-grade-mixer thought one last mental going-over to make sure it’s absolutely perfect, and you turn to your person-beside-you-kindred-spirit-chocolate-and-vanilla friend, and say it.

“Spring’s coming.”

Or whatever your beautiful thought is, and it’s beautiful because it came at you ninety miles per hour and you were able to sift through the seashore junk and pull yourself to dry land and inspect it and perfect it and (this is the hardest part) SAY it—and it’s yours now. And it’s beautiful because it’s the one sane idea in your crazy, cuckoo, messed-up head, and you feel like (with the way your crazy, cuckoo, messed-up life is going so far) you could do with a little sanity. And if you’re like me (and you must be—just a little bit—because otherwise why would you still be listening?) and if your friend’s like you (they just might be) and if you’re both enjoying the feel of the sun on your skin after months of cold and wet and snow and ice—well then, that beautiful thought will take you places, carrying you beyond the bounds of your imagination, letting you sit on a breath of wind and puffing you out to the sky—like Icarus and Daedalus, only you won’t drown, you know you won’t, because you’ve got a lifeline thought of your very own to pull you back to Earth.

If you’re like me.

Are you?