The Bittersweetness Of Late October//October 24th, 2021

 I spend much of my life counting down the days until Halloween.

And yet, when it comes as close as it is now, there’s a certain heaviness and sadness that comes with it, that makes me wish it would slow down, and that the season would last just a little bit longer.

I don’t know if Halloween has ever really been about one specific day for me, even as a child. Yes, I always looked forward to the actual day of, to the point of once being told by my father to “stop wishing his weekend away” when it fell on a Sunday, but there was always more to it than that, even if I didn't have any specific plans leading up to Halloween itself. It was about the world being alive with autumn colors, the decorations on neighbors’ lawns and on long car rides. Just a general feeling in the air that wasn’t fully discernible during any other time of year.

I tried to write a poem about it once. I don’t remember the specifics, and I don’t really know whether I should wish I still had the notebooks that contained the poetry I wrote as a teenager now, because, yikes, but I expressed it as something along the lines of feeling like I didn’t fit in anywhere, ever, but then during the month of October it was like the universe gave me one big gift with my name on it, transforming itself into exactly what I wished the world could be. 

I had to run an errand today near my childhood home, and, while looking out at the decorations along the way, and the perfect gloomy sky, I couldn’t stop myself from asking out loud, “Why can’t it always just be this way?”

You can tell that people are really getting into Halloween now that it’s just a week away. Houses are fully decorated, pumpkins are carved, and a spooky excitement fills the air. But as I look at the world, the way it is right now, I also see the sad reality that, a week from tomorrow, many of those decorations will have been taken down already. The pumpkins will be rotting, drooping despite an obvious desire to hold on. Gradually, but never gradually enough, the world will transform back into the place that it normally is, as if Halloween can’t possibly be a thing that anyone thinks about for more than a month or two. Everyone will move onto the next thing, except the rare few of us that will go through the motions, but really just be lying in wait for what society deems “spooky season” to come around again, so we can fit in, and have a place.

October is so fleeting, and I think this has truly been my fastest one yet. It’s incredibly bittersweet. 

Stay spooky, my friends, and savor what remains. The world is ours, for a little while longer.