October, Soft and Harmless Until Enough Time Goes By

I’m so tired. I’m excited yet I’m so tired; the anthem of October. 

Last year, I wrote a piece that resurrected my love for writing, and history repeats itself. The sleepiness of October has returned, sometimes the sort of sleepy that is cozy like a warm hug, sometimes in a way that drags you down, deep deep down. A year has passed and it feels like I have so much more figured out but I am somehow still the same person. A year has passed and it feels like I’m a completely different person but haven’t figured anything else out yet. I am torn between these two realities, unsure of which one is my lived experience, the other a figment of my imagination. Maybe neither exists, and I am just caught in the disillusionment that time passing automatically equates to the growth of self. Maybe I am the same girl I have always been. 

No, that’s still wrong. I am not the same girl I was last October. I remember her, one year ago, desperate to fall out of love, frantically trying to unhook the claws of the past out of her spine, deep gashes that would not stop bleeding. The girl I am today still tends to these wounds, but they no longer bleed. They are merely scars tracing back memories of fondness and the sweet warmth of being in love. Who I am today, that love still lives unfettered in my soul, now finding its home in creating art and learning and late-night talks with friends and dancing with strangers. It is not the same, but it is fulfilling in its own right. October, I am still trying to find my way, but I can feel my feet now. I can feel the ground beneath my soles, finally solid. 

And I know that maybe next October, I will find myself lost again, the labyrinth of my 20s catching up with me once again. But who’s to say it won’t be better than it is now? I try not to dwell on how my life will look in a year, in two years, in five years, because what is the point? Why burden myself with the stress of the future when there is so much hope and love to indulge in today? I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fists, because there is still a childlike rage, a childlike loneliness that will forever haunt me. I try to release my stiff fingers from my sweaty palms, try to release the rage and melancholy from the past year. Slowly. Very slowly.

I try not to wait for anything anymore. I try not to anticipate the seasons, months, birthdays, experiences, the next October. I wait for October when the New Year comes around, when school lets out, when summer peaks, and it is usually good, but I find that it is never as good as the October that I am anticipating. So I resist. I let the passage of time move accordingly, at its own pace. Sometimes it feels too fast, and I grind my teeth together to stop myself from shouting at it to slow down. My jaw aches. Sometimes it lingers too long, the moment beginning to rot. I want to shove it away and press a gun to its forehead to force it to move along. But no matter what I do, no matter what I want, time will not listen. Time is deaf and blind, heeding only its own thoughts, and sometimes I’m jealous that it can not see how lost I feel. 

I dream of the brief window when the sun sets, where the sky turns from a brilliant blue to a golden orange as the sun kisses the horizon. As it continues to settle lower behind the distant skyline, the sky fades into soft pink, and then before you know it, night has fallen. It’s the same three-minute cycle every day, yet it still has the power to take our breath away as if we are just seeing it for the first time. The way the sun sets is the same way I experience October, and it’s the same way I’m experiencing my 20s. 

It is October now. We laugh and talk about poetry and sex and death. We listen to jazz, the sweet vibrato of the saxophone denoting the autumn days as they crumble by. I recognize this song; I whistle it as I walk. I release any inhibitions of what has happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow. Oh, life is beautiful at this very moment. Life is beautiful, and October will soon pass me by. So I continue to whistle, continue to dream about love, and continue to talk with my friends about poetry and sex and death; the anthem of October.