Dealing With Fall

Someone once told me that their least favorite season of all was autumn, because it was the time when everything started dying and the world became cold. 

I was cuddling as far under the covers as I could to escape the crisp morning air that was slinking in from the open window, when I realized how strange it was that there was a cool morning around me in the first place. Getting out of bed, I grabbed my Goodwill oversize poncho, pulled it over my head, and gazed out the window, greeting the cloudy fall weather that encased my sister's apartment. Then, I headed for the kitchen, put a pot of hot water on, hunted for tea bags, and cut myself a piece of pie my sister's room mate had brought home last night. You know the kind of pie that's 1/3 whipped cream, 1/3 chocolate mousse, 1/3 guilty pleasure - a store bought sugar binge is what I'm referring to. It's a totally worthless sham of a food item, that can only be justified during the odd hours of the morning or at 7:00 a.m. with my Tazo tea and autumn feelings.

I curled up on the couch and began to analyze my bizarro dreams, which, by the way, have been unbelievably wild since I moved back to the states. And, I don't mean wild, like "out there", kind of dreams. More like, did I really teach a yoga class to a bunch of senior citizens and my mom in a public library? Why am I still dreaming about my days as a server at Lumberyard Brewing Company...and can someone please run this drink order to my table???

Mostly my slumbers have been hijacked by scenarios that are very close to reality, making my mornings puzzling as I try to figure out what is "dream world" and what is "real world". However, I guess we are always in dream world to some extent.

What can be said for sure, though, is that in this dream world/real world, as I hide from morning cloud cover instead of summer sun, it's apparent that fall is here. Even walking through the food co-op, where I have been working this month, butternut squash, pumpkins, and vegetables I haven't seen in years decorate the entrance way with colors like changing leaves on a tree. And, as I embrace this crisp autumn morning, the first true signifier to myself that summer is being replaced by a cooler and more transitory season, I feel it in more than just the dropping temperature and collection of leaves tornadoing around the backyard.

Since being back in America, or rather, settling in to American life here in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I have been faced by change in more than just a colorful way. As I knew I would, I came home to a lot of difficult conversations, separate lives, and actually, sadly, really no room for me. It's close to what I imagine being caught in a divorce is like as a child, but as an adult, your shit goes into boxes or storage somewhere and you'll be lucky to see half the stuff again. You don't have parents deciding when you spend time with them, ie. weekends with your Dad. No, that's now on you as an adult and so you morph into Catherine Zeta Jones in Entrapment, stealthily limboing your way around people's emotions and sensitivities, which always hurt worse than lasers, in my book. As an adult, you don't get a room in one parent's place and a room in another. As an adult, you usually lose two homes - home with them, together, as your parents, and home as in your house where your childhood is neatly wrapped up and kept safe for you to return to when you need it.

The truth is that spring has always been the time where I feel the most change and unsettled emotion. I think it was because that's always the time of year when you have to make decisions. Where do I want to go to college? Do I even want to go to college? What am I going to do this summer? Will this school year ever even end???

But, since I chose the end of summer to return to America, after almost an endless summer in Thailand, it's decision time, it's making moves time, it's where do you see yourself time, and I makes me realize that despite the crippling guilt of not being here, despite the guilt I just feel everyday, because of my parents, and my inability to do ANYTHING, despite the anger and sadness that I harbor because of what life has dealt, I have to keep going and this fall is a time for change.


I didn't think this post would take this direction when I sat down to write. I think I'll just leave it there.