It's true that time is precious.
I don't delight in getting older. I'm averse to the changes that come with the seasons, not just the weather, but life, in general. I've never been good with change, in any capacity.
I'll be 38 this year. I don't know that I ever thought I'd make it this far. Adulthood isn't something I ever wished for as a child. I remember telling my mother that I would purposely flunk school, so I'd never have to grow up.
I didn't, obviously. Flunk school, I mean. But I don't know that I really 'grew up' either.
Adulthood was never something I identified with, and it still isn't.
I don't feel human most days, never mind adult human.
Maybe my greatest wish would be to stop time.
And yet...every year I only long to move forward. To the only time of year that makes sense to me.
Perhaps it is the depersonalization I feel through winter, through spring, and through summer, that keeps me longing for autumn.
In autumn I feel real. Like I can do anything. Like I can be anything. Most importantly, like I can be myself.
It's never been a simple thing to explain. I can tell you that my favorite holiday is Halloween, but truthfully? You probably don't understand the extent to which I mean that. I've been told I have a way with words, many times throughout the course of my life, but I don't know if I truly have the language to express all that Halloween is to me.
It's intrinsic.
It's not just a season. It's not just a favorite holiday. It's something that I need, like breathing. It's the blood in my veins, the beating of my heart, the air that I breathe. The closest anyone has ever come to describing it accurately was to say that I treat it like a religion.
I've never been especially religious, in the traditional sense, but it seemed like a worthy comparison.
Still, though, whatever I say never seems to be enough.
I don't know how to make people get it.
I'm always being told not to wish time away. Years when I've had to fight for my vacation time, I can see the strange looks in my bosses' or colleagues' eyes, as they wonder why I can't just make a 'simple' change to my plans. I have been told that a love for Halloween in adulthood implies 'arrested development', though that was just someone who got annoyed when I said something they didn't like about football. I've even had it implied that loving Halloween is simply my 'online persona', and that, my friends, was unforgivable.
I don't think anyone, even some of the people closest to me in the world, understand how vital Halloween is to me. Not just for my happiness...but for my survival.
If I didn't have Halloween to look ahead to, I don't think I could make it through the rest of the year. I 'rush the seasons' and 'wish time away', because I am nothing without Halloween.
Perhaps I am not 'rushing the seasons' at all, but simply trying to survive. Each day I fight a battle with anxiety, depression, depersonalization...pushing and pushing through until I get to feel like me again, for a short time.
Maybe it's not something anyone else can understand. Maybe it just is.
But I won't apologize for it.
Do what you want with the time in between, but as for me, I will be out searching, and ticking days off of calendar boxes, until I am home again.
Until I am me again.
Until I am again.
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