November flush and your flannel cure

My head is swimming as I stand under the fluorescent lights in the Taco Bell, wobbling slightly in my boots, waiting with my friends for our order. Though it is a little bit past midnight, the energy and company in the small fast-food restaurant are eager and alive. I see a black cat, Edward Scissorhands, Starfire from Teen Titans, a couple of vampires, and you would think I was hallucinating, but given that it was the last night of Halloweekend, it only makes sense that I was sandwiched between some guy in a mask I couldn’t identify and Coraline. Despite the biting wind outside, my limbs tingle from the heat of the kitchen behind me, and my insides, my chest and belly, are warm from the memories of the night and the lingering of tequila in my veins. Nights like these remind me of summer, of college nights and tomorrows with no obligations. I check my phone, and I’m almost convinced that I’ve gone a little crazy when I see the time jump from 1:59 AM to 1:00 AM, and suddenly, I’m not experiencing a fun, late-night snack with my friends but rather I’m slapped with a harsh reality check that November is here, that I’m no longer this adolescent girl who can waste away her days, and the future that I always yearned was the present that I’m living in. 

I tend to get caught up in the excitement that occurs mid-year, whisking me away from the melting snow in Aprils through the summer months. The humid nights give way to the start of a new academic year, and suddenly, the trees are red and I’m one year older. The next thing I know, excitement bubbles in the city for weekends of dressing up and binge-drinking, followed by the hangover of messy mistakes and the loss of an hour of sunlight, a cornerstone marking the end of the year. As I fall deeper into November, I can smell the sharp aroma of cranberries and salted meat, the jingle of bells and string lights illuminating the horizon of December. No matter how much I want to be, I am never ready for it. 

I can not fathom the arrival of November. I can clearly recall specific markers throughout the past year, my nerves on Valentine’s night, the debauchery of St. Patrick’s day, the first smell of spring through the cracks in my open window, the first whiff of oppressive, stifling summer air, turning 24, the first days of I love you’s and the last days of the sun peeking through the trees at 7 PM. But I can never seem to remember the days, the moments in between the big occasions, the mundane days working at my desk, and reading my book on the swings, eclipsed by the moments that take up the most space in my journals. 

I know it’s not realistic, though, to remember every Tuesday and Wednesday, to cling onto all the random 6ths and 14ths and 27ths of the months like I have a photographic memory, documenting every nap and meal into a scrapbook in my head. I know I can not do it, both physically and mentally (because imagine that; every single day of your existence churning around in your head like a highlight reel except it’s not a highlight reel, it’s a never-ending documentary that you’re living in), but I can’t help but selfishly wish that I could hoard all my days, stockpile every single memory into a cache because what even is 80 years? My temporal range doesn’t even hold a candle to the history of human existence.

I wonder if I were to do more with my Mondays and Thursdays, if life existed beyond my paycheck and the comfort of my bedroom on those days, I would be able to timestamp existence life better. And it’s true because the night I go out to dinner with my friend is an easier memory to evoke than the one of me curled up with my book on my bed at 7 PM, like I’m rifling through a filing cabinet in my consciousness, and there are folders marked bright yellow and ones that have fallen to the back of the shelf, growing dusty as the words begin to fade, as my banal days begin to fade away. I imagine the tick marks you draw on a timeline, each one signifying a different occurrence. Some people have drained their pen of ink with all they have done, and I feel as if my line remains stagnant, unblemished by trivia nights and weekend trips and concerts and haunted houses.

But what even is a better life? How do you even define a better life? November feels like peer pressure, reminded of all that I planned to accomplish this year but haven’t, the tension of setting goals for next year, goals that will again remain untouched. I am not someone who can survive on spontaneity. I have known of this from a very young age. I thrive in schedule and routine, in knowing the plan, always. To some, this may seem prosaic, that I am not making the most out of my healthy lungs and my strong back. 

But they are wrong. What is commonplace to them, dinner at 6 PM and tea before bed, is living to me. It is thriving for me. I may live half of my days buried in books, but I have learned so much, experienced so much from other people who have sculpted stories and fairytales from their own experiences and from their intimate imaginations. I spend hours on blank pages, hoping to one day provide the same escape for someone who enjoys the slowness as much as I do. Who are you to say I have not lived? I have callouses on my feet and scars on my arms to prove you wrong. I have worlds in my head, wrinkles at the edges of my eyes to show how much I have laughed, imperfections on my cheeks from all the time I have spent in the sun. My heart has stitches on it, and my lungs are not fully red. My ribs ache sometimes, but all of them are reminders that I have lived. That I am living. 

Maybe next November I will be better prepared. Maybe then, I will be less fearful of the turning of the year. All I can do is hope that maybe next year, one year older, one more year of memories, of old and new friends, of falling in love day after day, I will feel the ground under my feet better. But November makes no promises, and life surely does not owe me anything. All I can do now is hope. Step after step, breath after breath. All I can do now is simply live.