The Jacaranda Syndrome

If you visit my home town in November,
you cannot miss the Jacarandas.
For most of the year, they are simply large,
non-descript trees which line some streets 
and decorate our parks and yards.
In the winter, you wouldn't give them the time of day.
They seem almost dead.
They briefly drop their foliage at the end of the dry season,
then leaf up again when the rains come.

By mid-spring, they begin to transform.
Small green buds appear at first and,
as if born-again overnight,
they bloom into the most vibrant of purple flowers
covering the whole tree spread.

As you drive down any street,
your eyes cannot help but notice the exotic splash of purple,
appearing in random tufts throughout the suburbs.
Streets, lined with these majestic Jacarandas
magically transform into avenues of mystical proportions.
The flowers laying a thick and royal carpet where they fall.

It is simply beautiful.

But with most things in this natural world,
there is a downside.
There always is.
The coming of these flowers heralds a warning.
As a student, I used to cringe at the purple displays.
It always meant that finals were close at hand.
The blanket of blooms, once fallen
create a browning and smelly sea of mulch.
staining cars, footpaths, lawns and everything else they cover.
As the beauty fades, the signs of decay emerge.
It is a mixture of allure and forewarning.
A bitter/sweet reminder and presence.

Life is full of these.

Recently a dear friend of mine was relaying his journey with depression and anxiety.
He said he often felt very down and vulnerable around the year's end.
He had begun to piece together a pattern to his emotions.
He saw that his low times seem to sweep over him at the same time each  year.
The darkness emerged as the Jacarandas blossomed.
The words 'Jacaranda Syndrome' came to my mind.

As my friend shared,
he opened up about his life as a boy,
and how he hated the end of each school year.
This always brought the dreaded report
and the ensuing disappointment his father felt
and conveyed to him.
Try as he did,
my friend did not succeed at school.
And each year, he faced the rejection and pain
of being verified by this fearsome and authoritative piece of paper.
The message was clear and unfair and stinging:
he was essentially no good.
He felt dumb.
Stupid.
Incompetent
and defeated.

Things only slightly improved throughout his school years.
Having faced this inevitable gauntlet year in and year out, 
he soon left those school walls
for the journey into the adult world.
He took with him the poor academic judgement.
He took to heart his father's disapproval.
The legacy of this would reappear sporadically,
emerging with the signs of the closing Spring days.
And as the weather warmed and the flowers emerged,
instead of celebrating the year's end,
it covered him in a blanket of shame.

And each and every year
the purple blooms of the Jacarandas were reliably there.
To remind him.
Reclaim him.
Purple.
Shameful.
Stupid.
Wrong.

But there was hope.
Through the process of his own male journey,
pitted with wounds and hurt and pain,
there was a way to break this branded indignity.
His rites of passage brought him beyond this yoke.
It led him away from this ingrained resignation
and created a 'passage' to move on from his past.
In middle age, my friend can now see the triggers and reminders of past humiliations.
Past hurt.
Past rejection.
The cycle HAS been broken.
This 'Jacaranda Syndrome'
is now no more than a marker for him.
to remind him of this part of his life.
To give him space to acknowledge it.
Sit with it.
And learn from it.
He is no longer this small boy
who cannot sit still, learn or achieve,
but a man of wisdom, compassion and insight.
A college graduate, a writer and elder.
His internal scars are his badge of courage
His pain; his teacher.

As I write this,
I am gazing over to my own beautiful jacaranda from my window.
It's in its final days of flowering.
The carpet of lavender is withering and dry,
and the wind is scattering each memory of it for another year.
It once again silently turns into a barren form.
But inside this tree there is a hope.
There is life within.
Hidden within its core.
The memory of the petals.
The cells await,
patient and calm.
Ready to bloom again
in another spring.

And when this new season comes,
and the colour purple announces the summer days,
and the memories and angst raise their heads to the surface
as they will inevitably do,
my dear, dear friend will once again be reminded of his pain,
those memories,
those words,
those feelings.

But now,
so very much present in the now,

they are all merely his welcome companions.