It's been two weeks now since Halloween.
This year, I was able to hold onto things a little more than usual, with continued events and multiple trips to The Great Jack O'Lantern Blaze, but it's finally hitting me now that the official time of Halloween is, in fact, over.
It's funny, because when I say this on social media, I suddenly get flooded with people telling me it's not really over, or that it's always in my heart. (Or my least favorite, trying to push me into the, spooky or otherwise, Christmas spirit. Please read this post before you attempt to go down that road.)
The strange thing is, I know these things. I very obviously know how to hold onto Halloween despite calendar dates.When it comes to my free time, I essentially live completely outside the confines of a calendar. And yet, I can't help but feel that heaviness now, two weeks later, as Halloween gets put away and forgotten once again by the outside world.
What does it mean when I say I miss Halloween, even though I live in it every moment I can? I know I don't need the outside world's approval...and yet, somehow I miss when it's there.
There's a certain acceptance that only comes during the layman's "spooky season". A feeling of belonging. It brings with it a beauty that, for me, is unmatched during any other time. Autumn in itself, at its peak, is such a glorious thing to behold. And then, on top of that, the world immerses itself in the things that make me smile the most. I can take a walk and see so many pumpkins smiling back at me. So many ghosts billowing in the breeze. So many eagerly waving skeletons. I wrote a poem many years ago, in which I described Halloween season as one big present wrapped up with my name on it; as if everyone was acting a certain way just for me, the way perhaps a more "normal" person would feel at their own birthday party. And it does still, very much, feel that way. As if the universe is calling out to me, specifically, to remind me that I have a place in it. To remind me, no matter what has happened to me throughout the year, that I am, in fact, alive.
There is truly nothing in this world that can make me feel the way Halloween can.
And so, I suppose, it's just a little difficult for me to let go of the time when the world truly transforms. It is, definitely, enough that I've been able to transform my own universe...it just can be hard to accept that the masses of people who suddenly seem to be just like me for a month or two, suddenly aren't again. To accept the emptiness in the spaces that once contained the things that made my heart soar. Perhaps that's why I saw a deflated pumpkin man on a walk tonight and wanted desperately to revive him, as if he were a living being. Perhaps that's what the true Halloween season is to me...a living being that I never get to spend enough time with, but one who shapes the rest of my life in ways that no one else ever could.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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