Sometimes, the coming of autumn feels like a faraway dream. One that can never be truly realized, much like falling in love with a fictional world. It feels tangible, yet not, at the same time, when the world is blanketed in snow, or scorching with the heat of summer.
You remember autumn existing, but does it? You wonder. It feels so far away, like it happened, but didn’t. Like some fuzzy dream of something that could have happened, but seems too perfect to have been real.
Summer does its best to destroy any hope of that beautiful dream existing again. The stifling heat overtakes the world like an ominous shadow, draining the life out of everything. Every task feels exhausting as the sun burns through another day, burning our energy, burning our eyes. It feels like a perpetual headache; this constant persistent heaviness over your day, your life, that feels like it will never break.
You think of the pumpkins from your beloved dream of autumn, and how they wilt and wither at autumn’s end. You can picture them now, burnt and rotten, desperately trying to hold on to the promise that their season will return once more. You relate to those pumpkins, quite possibly more than any human being you’ve ever known. Certainly more than the human beings who think the miserable summer is a time of the year to be celebrated.
As the endless summer days drag on, you begin to notice shifts in the air. Suddenly there is a cool breeze one evening; the next morning a grayer sky. Could it be? Could it be that that beautiful dream was real after all, and could it be coming back?
One morning, the news finally arrives of summer’s death. There are people who mourn as if their life has no meaning without blinding sun and baking temperatures, but for you, this is a time of celebration. If ever you would entertain the idea of dancing on a grave, summer’s was as inviting as a neon dance floor with a mirror ball spinning overhead.
You step outside on that day…that lovely day when summer dies, and you feel the change…the change that all those smaller shifts were leading up to. The cool breeze whispers to you. “I am here.” The world seems to welcome you back with open arms, as if you’ve returned from doing battle with the most vicious of villains, which, in you world, summer just might be.
You take it all in. The leaves starting to slightly turn. That cool breeze in the air. The pumpkins that have started to appear on your neighbors’ porches. The overall feeling of it all, and you realize, it was never a dream.
You don’t know how something that feels so amazing, so perfect, so made for you, can possibly be real, but as you walk into autumn’s waiting arms, you know that, somehow, it is.
And then, like those burnt up pumpkins, you rise, beautiful again in this time when the darkness, the unique, can be celebrated.
Comments
Post a Comment