Autumn used to be your least favorite season, as the icy cold air starts to grip on more to your nostrils, and how the once glorious leaves flourish in the empty space like ballet dancers beginning to rehearse their run of The Nutcracker for Christmas, eventually falling onto the ground like pieces into place. The opportunity to wear more layers to shield yourself from the growing cold, or yourself. Crappy wired headphones blasting the autumn playlist as the summer one already begins to mildew from the splashes of the pool water and summer love ending in tears. The sky greets you with a dark embrace the moment you get home from school, only mirroring how you feel now that you’re alone with your thoughts.
It’s a feeling you know all too well, one moment you think you have it all figured out, then you step outside into the wilderness of the built up urban expanse in which you’ve lived, laughed and cried and in which you will continue to live, laugh and cry, and like the ghost of Christmas past it all comes creeping up on you. You shouldn’t have said that, or, if you should have, you said it wrong, or perhaps you just shouldn’t have spoken at all, yeah, that sounds about right, you always know the wrong thing to say. Back then what you thought was your confidence and growth amalgamizes into delusion and selfishness through the lens of time, like the once glorious leaf you have fallen once again looking through mud-stained glasses.
But as time continues its never-ending march, you learn that like the changing seasons, the way in which you view them also changes. All the signs are still there, but as the trees and flowers wilt in the cold, they flourish once again. They don’t let their environment define them and use it to their advantage. Just like you did. Just like I did.
This is my first autumn since leaving behind a part of myself. Surrounded by new streets and new faces I look at the falling leaves and flower petals and compare myself to their subtle beauty, their ability to change, and grow again. The seeds I’ve planted in others slowly growing into relationships that will support me in ways that I cannot even see now. And while ‘home’ may seem far away, it’s roots extend to follow me everywhere. Years ago I saw myself wilting under the weight of everything it took to get me here but…
Flowers are prettier together, after all.
