Fall

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It is fall. Autumn. That time of year. The leaves are turning all kinds of shades of copper and burnt sienna, yellow ochre and dark crimson and then dropping, dramatically to the floor, as if in communal protest. So self sacrificing it seems. The nights are drawing in and it feels like the closed sign goes up at the door much earlier than usual. The heavier blankets are being pulled from cupboards, too small wellingtons are in desperate need of replacing, last years winter coats are either too snug or in need of some love and attention. Favourite films that lie in the loft with a coating of dust are about to be pulled out because it's that time of year. The time of year where you feel a permission to draw in, to hibernate. 

In my cosiest of moments in this season, I relish all things that generate heat. Hot coffee after being caught in the rain, hot chocolate from a flask in the middle of a walk in the woods, warm toasted pain au chocolat for sunday morning breakfast when everyone thinks they're just getting normal toast, cardigans and dressing gowns and slippers and knitted blankets wrapped around legs whilst cosying up for a family film. Warmth, real warmth.

In my darkest moments in this season, I dread all the things that lack light, the things that draw darkness. The sun seemingly snatched from the sky day after day after day, no light, no blue sky, just varying shades of grey and then darkness. The sense of home as havoc and not haven, hours and hours and hours stuck indoors keeping away from the incessant rain, especially that 'I can't really be bothered to rain type rain', that one makes me the angriest. A heaviness in mood that just will not shift, the weight of it being overbearing and the only cure seeming to be solitude. Sweet dark solitude, my very good friend. My very beguiling enemy. 

My life at this time of year often seems to be in fall, a perpetual state of not standing or walking, just falling. Falling. Falling. Every now and then I get that sense that I'm about to fall safely to my feet and the relief is immense. But just then, I get a nasty jerk and my heart is in my mouth and I feel a lump in my throat and I'm falling once again. Faster, heavier and with more panic. It feels like a dream, that's what people often say isn't it? It's true, it does feel like a dream and sometimes I emerge from it and I laugh at myself, for the drama of it all, the time wasting, the over thinking, the self indulgence and the arrogance. Sometimes, I roll my eyes and feel a kind of anger, you know the 'I can't really be bothered to rain' type of anger. Other times, I'm happy to sit alongside this fall. I watch curiously to see another me procrastinate, to watch her sweep debris under the carpet, to watch her sitting very still on that princess and the pea bed desperately trying to decipher if she can in fact feel the pea. I might just be the kind of girl that will never know, it might be just there under the first few layers but I just won't ever know it. 'I might never know it, I might never know it, I might never know it!' Then I clicked my heels together three times and I woke up and I realised it was all a dream and then I lived happily ever after. The end.