An Open Letter to the Month of March

Dear March,

Listen, I get that you, like all aging singles on OkCupid, have commitment issues. But I’m gonna need you to get some help. Go to therapy like the rest of us. Dig into your childhood issues. Journal. Join July as he works through his insistence on being a wet blanket and hotter than balls simultaneously.

Do whatever it takes.

Last week it was seventy-four degrees. I wore Crocs. So pleasant. A couple days ago it snowed. WTF, March. And this was not the good kind of snow that flirty February offers, but sleet and hail and rain and fog too. There was an icon on my weather app that I had never seen before. That’s how off the rails you are, March. Tim Cook is having to invent new graphics to predict what mayhem you’ll be bringing us next.

And don’t get me started on your wind. Yes, great. You can blow. You blow real nice. But thirty miles per hour is a tad excessive. Try a lighter touch, a gentle flutter that makes my hair look more “Giselle living her best life on the beach post-divorce” and less “my hairbrush is actually a rummaging raccoon.” I don’t need a bunch of plastic bags and empty pizza boxes showing up in my yard like some crappy holiday decor. What I need is for you to get your shit together, March.

Sure, you give us nice things too sometimes, like sportsball madness and a whole holiday devoted to day drinking. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I appreciate these things, I do. It’s just hard to focus on them amid your never-ending rollercoaster of drama. I was pretty happy about the colorful blooms you had recently given us, for example, until I walked outside this morning and all my tulips’ heads had been chopped off by the random cold snap, Game of Thrones-style. Shame!

And yes, it’s hard to be an in-between month. We all have divorced parents; we know what it’s like to be caught in the middle. You don’t have the easy advantages of winter or summer. But you know what? Tough shit. Life’s not fair. Take a page from October, that affable in-betweener. Clear skies. Mild temperatures. Festive foliage. Invite him to coffee and ask him what his secret is. Take detailed notes while you sip on something pumpkin-spiced.

Or if you simply can’t stomach sucking up to one of the other months, just pick a side, any side. Ally yourself with winter. Go full frost. Ally yourself with summer. Lean in to White Claws and mosquito bites. I don’t care. JUST. PICK.

For all of our sakes, I am begging you: pull yourself together.

Until next year,
Emily O. Gravett