Cicadian Rhythm

A personal essay in three parts

Apr 12, 2024

30, 2024

My Saturn has returned
Deeper Well, Kacey Musgraves

Before the phone in my hand comes to, its blankness reflects my furrow. The deep crease there is a fold I want to iron out but haven’t yet. I add Look into Botox Montreal on my Notes app to-do list, 75 items deep.

“Cicadas can be seasonal or periodical, the latter only coming out every 13 and 17 years. This spring marks the first convergence of these two broods in 221 years, an event that won’t happened again until 2245,” the article on my phone reads, or TikTok video shows, or podcast says. To me, the song of the cicada feels like summer. When I look at the map of where they are, hundreds of miles southwest from me, I have to wonder if that’s something I know from movies or if it’s a real memory.

I do that a lot. Fragmented memories hobbled together by stories, photos and conjecture. My first 20 years feel like a detective’s theory board, the red string stringing my baggage along. I have a psych minor which means I understand that this experience is a trauma response and also that I’m annoying.

In that moment of looking at my phone, cicadian rhythms become another thing I want to keep track of. The moon cycle, how much water I’ve had today, when Venus is in Gemini, what episode of Abbott Elementary I’m on, all sorts of things are just ticking away in my head at all times. I can’t help it, I love patterns and symmetry (I once convinced myself the number 14 was following me after a harrowing viewing of the Jim Carrey thriller The Number 23), but as an undiagnosed Forgetter it’s a tall order.

The way I keep track of things goes as follows: texting myself and leaving the notification untouched, using the ‘hey siri’ function to set something as a reminder only to dismiss the notification hours later, my Notes app, and scribbles on various paper and paper-adjacent surfaces in my house (much to my boyfriend’s dismay). I’m also very bad at keeping track of my calendar; sometimes putting things in, sometimes not. I’ve double booked social engagements hundreds of times, and I’ve even missed a meeting or three.

I wish I could say I forget because I’m too busy living in the moment, but I think my relationship with time is just as unpredictable as time itself—sometimes it’s slow-moving, sometimes it wizzes by, sometimes you stare at a wall clock for an embarrassing amount of time until you realize it’s broken.

All this to say, I will likely forget about the cicadas in a few weeks time… but not yet. These insects and their patterns sent me on an exploratory journey. It made me aware (maybe too aware) that I am a sum of a lifetime, collecting seconds as they tick by like some kind of big-mouthed Kirby. My life is my hoard of minutes, hours, days, etc.

The past has always fascinated me more than my future. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the big picture feels like a scattered puzzle and when some of the pieces click into place, their clarity stands out? Despite my forgetfulness, despite my Swiss cheese history, and despite my better judgment, those moments stick. I am here, I exist, they say.

Some of these memories are behind doors that open with the slightest pressure, and others require a key. Pressing bruises can juice the metal clang from my body—my wrists, my heart, my mouth, they are all easy targets. So, I press.

I press and press until words appear and I’m left with 13 and 17.

13 and 17. Both memories are huge and yet so small now that I am 17 and 13 years away from them. Another one of time’s unpredictabilities: healing.

I want the cicadas coming out of their slumber to know how I’ve changed in the 13 and 17 years since they last saw the world, since they last saw me. I want to hold up my big, gross, shiny moments and look them over as if they were coins I found on the street. It happened, but look where I am now, I’ll tell them.

So, dear reader, please enjoy this jaunt through time as I follow the cicadian rhythm. It happened, but look where I am now.

Read the next parts here: