round and round we go, where we stop nobody knows…

“round and round we go, where we stop nobody knows… round and round we go…” this sing-song-y childhood chant has been niggling at my brain for months now. I seem to remember it from my days playing on the merry-go-round, or maybe it was a part of a duck-duck-goose kind of game; for some reason I can’t remember the specifics, but the phrase has been chasing around in my head intrinsically tied to how fast my legs could carry me in whatever merriment the words were born. There’s an image I have of my childhood self that’s tied to these words: face all aglow with an uncontainable joy, and laughter spilling out without any restraint while the dark green and brown of the trees and the light green of the new spring grass blurs in circles around me. The spinning vertigo rush leaves me breathless and flushed, while the addiction to that feeling requires me to submit to the twirling forces over and over again. The image makes me smile.

Recently my life has encompassed all of the vertigo-induced adrenaline from the figurative merry-go-round twirls, but with none of the laughter or smiles. I’m working to add the joy back into my life without the twists and turns I’ve been encountering; hopefully the twirling chaos isn’t an unknown addiction. While I still don’t know where I’ll be stopping (the nursery rhyme still holds true in real life) I’ll leave the twists and turns to the rollercoaster’s at Disneyland!