It's a strange and fascinating, thought not necessarily in a good way, feeling, when you feel so at home in the world one day and then like you've landed on an alien planet the next. How can something that felt so perfect, so comfortable yesterday, feel so foreign and off-putting today?
This is how November first has always felt for me, though.
I've often compared it to being away at boarding school for about ninety percent of the year. You spend this huge chunk of time in a place where you don't fit in, that never truly feels like home even if you have a bed there, and then suddenly, for one glorious month or so, you're able to travel back to your real home. It feels so fabulous, so welcoming. You finally feel like you're a part of the world again. You have a family, a home, a place.
But, of course that wretched thing called the calendar has to involve itself and the day comes where it dictates you must get back on that bus and get back to that false excuse for a home. You're dizzy. You're tired. You feel like an extraterrestrial being stuck on a planet you just can't get the hang of, when just the day before, you were among your own. How did this happen so quickly? How did the world shift so suddenly out of your favor, when just one day ago, the stars were aligned?
Such is the feeling of November first. Just yesterday the world was a place I recognized, a place I wanted to be in. It was a world where people complimented me, where everyone seemed to be transfixed by the same things that make me smile day after day, and everything looked the way it would in my best dreams.
But then the morning came, and it was as if everyone suddenly had amnesia, and yesterday was entirely forgotten. I was getting strange looks for my outfit, particularly my pumpkin shaped bag, complete with a few giggles and whispers and pointed fingers as I passed. Were these things it acceptable yesterday?
Even in my heart's home of Sleepy Hollow, decorations were already being ripped down. The scarecrows that lined the streets yesterday were already gone first thing this morning. The twelve foot skeleton near the parking lot disappeared some time in between us getting there and then going back to the car less than two hours later, as if his presence was somehow offensive now that November is here. Who does November think it is, anyway?
And of course the onslaught of Christmas has begun, as if the majority of the world has been sitting with bated breath, just waiting for the clock to strike midnight and signal Halloween's end, so it could be time to ring in the most overrated time of the year. Meanwhile, talking about Halloween on Labor Day is somehow unacceptable; you might make Summer Summers of Summerville spill her midday margarita.
I suppose my question is, what is this world we are living in? And why can we only be accepted in it once a year?
I'll just never understand that switch flip. I'll take it to my death that Halloween ends the most abruptly and aggressively of all the holidays.
But here's to all of us that won't go down with the flip of a calendar page. Here's to all of us that know that November is still fall, anyway. Here's to all of us that remain true to ourselves, all year round.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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