Dear October

The End of Autumn

I haven’t seen as much of you as I would like, I fear. I have spent morning hours cowered under my covers, eyes glazed, glued to a computer screen. I have had so many mugs of herbal tea that I have ceased to notice how many teaspoons of honey I am using. It just keeps getting sweeter. I walked up a hill on one of your mornings, the sunlight was nowhere to be seen and the woolly socks inside my flimsy flats were drenched. Notice the juxtaposition of clothing. Juxtaposition of weather. I squelched my way through torrential rain, followed by a mournful drizzle.

When I got indoors there were several dead leaves on the carpet.

Oh, October. I noticed yesterday how bare you had become. How desolate your trees were, grasping desperately to the last fluttering wisps of papery yellow. How windy and cold, how dark and eerie. There was a time when I used to treasure the moment the clock hand turned back, but now I dread it. I dread pitch black nights, and bumping into cows.

How different you are from the last time I stepped foot outdoors! Your leaves were still green and thick and strong, your weather manageable. It still is, never fear. I am walking around in pyjama shorts and a vest; you cannot be that bad.

I just am at a loss. I used to watch your transformation on an almost hourly rate. I saw every leaf fall from your branches, I noticed how your sunsets grew vividly icy. I could pinpoint the exact moment that my breath became clouds in the air. I was outdoors, breathing, drinking, living your every breath.

Not this year.

This year I spent indoors. I missed the beauty of change, the exhilaration of trees and wind and rolling fields. I missed it all and became like one of those dull housewives obsessed about their children. Like one of those scholars so deep in their books they ceased to notice a natural world existed. I became a bore. I lost my sense of being.

I fear I am losing who I am, autumn.

I am no longer in cahorts with all the people of my imagination. I thought it was they who had deserted me when in reality it is me who is growing more distant. My mind is filling with an effervescence of silence. I have no inspiration, anymore. No enthusiasm. There are no ideas filling the nooks and crannies of my mind. There is no thought. I am being dulled down.

I am panicking. I am trying to grasp at straws. I am using a thesaurus.

I long for a summer, any summer. Preferably a Summer of the Rooks.

I long for the rooks to come sailing through the skyies, one after the other. I long for the minstrels to rise slowly from their silent hibernation. I long for the sweet smell of strawberries, for the golden morning sunshine to flood through my brain. I long for the Phenomenal Girl to throw open her windows to the coolness of the atmosphere, for Twig’s calm voice as opposed to Delilah’s raised, angry one, for George to go back to his sister, and help her grow again. I long for the leaves to unfurl, for the blossoms to float, for the laughter to begin. I long for sunlight through blades of grass, for the crisp, clear cut distinction between yellow and blue and green and red.

For my wit, for my health, for my happiness.

Threads, Everywhere.

I am feeling a tad on the sighing repeatedly side of affairs today. Sitting uncomfortably on this new island of life, feeling the waves drag me further and further from the things that I know and am comfortable with.

Let us undress this strange and odd feeling. It is as though I am losing hold of the things that I always somehow took for granted. It is somehow as though a barrier has sprung up where there was once none. I cannot seem to speak in the same manner that I once did. The words have stopped flowing flawlessly from my mouth. I have ceased to conjure wit whenever it took my fancy. I am, in short, a bore.

I just don’t know what’s happening. Everything is happening at once, I think, and I feel as though everything is hurtling forwards and I am jogging along behind everything, but I am getting increasingly short of breath, and am finding it harder and harder to catch up, and all the while they are all getting further and further ahead of me.

I suppose it is strange and different when all of a sudden one has acquired a whole new family. Just last week I was driven to hospital and when asked who accompanied me there I said, gesturing awkwardly towards the young lady beside me, “erm, Uhm, her. My, erm, sister in law”

And she isn’t the only one! I now have three sisters in law and two brothers in law, in addition to my one sister and three brothers. I don’t know what to do with all the new love and concern. I mean I love these people. I have known them my whole life and suddenly they are my actual family and I just do not know how this makes me feel.

It should be making me feel secure but all I am feeling is tremendously lonely.

Then I think, lawd, do I even have friends?

And I know I do because I am always busy seeing people and having people over and calling people and skyping people but then why do I feel so alone in this vast circle of socialism?

So to undress this further I am taking a deeper look into the matter and coming to the tired conclusion that all this change is draining me. I am striving so hard to be things and avoid being things, and holding onto my pasts and my presents, that I am just losing sync with the world.