There is something called a nocebo effect: it happens when someone is convinced that a medication is going to have a negative effect.

I don’t think there is a word for what I have now. I am weaning off the medications and feeling more energetic than the weaning would realistically afford. Maybe it is just hope.

The weather has not improved. No good news coming in my inbox. But still, I seem to have a new perspective on things. I feel something much smaller than ambition, but there are gears turning again, propelling me forward with a sense of identity.

I think I remember being this.

I hear buzzing from a mason wasp’s pot. It resonates in my chest. In a good way – because moving outward from here is a field-full of purple heather, and beyond that the woods, where the songbirds are about to return.