The Way October Is Octobering

 I keep seeing these social media posts, saying things like "This October isn't October-ing the way previous Octobers Octobered", or something along those lines.

(This picture was found on a random Instagram account so I'm unsure of the artist.)

To be fair, I feel like these kinds of posts pop up for every occasion. Every month, every holiday...there always has to be some mass complaint that it doesn't feel like years past. (Don't even get me started on how every single New Year's Eve post is always about how much the previous year sucked.)

I understand it, sometimes...I think, in general, we are all always chasing the feelings we got from certain holidays and moments in time as children. I don't know that Christmas has felt Christmas-y to me since I turned eighteen-ish. It's hard not to feel like something is broken, when you're reaching for something that is no longer there, ripped away by the inevitable phenomenon of growing older. 

However, this October, at least where I am, I could not possibly disagree with these statements more.

About a week or so ago now, the weather finally turned cooler. We have sunny days, and gloomy days, but the autumnal crispness is in the air. For the first time, in probably several years now, I feel like we are having a real and true October. 

Last year in particular was absolutely miserable. It felt like an endless summer. Blazing sunlight made an autumn street fair feel like a beach day, and blinded me on walks. It ruined the atmosphere of most pictures I tried to take. Halloween itself was 85 degrees. I can actually only recall one day last October that actually felt like fall. I barely remember being outside at all, because the one month where I hate being indoors, felt so horrifically like the time of year I avoid being outdoors. Summer depression creeping into October was the worst feeling, and I've spent the last year actively worried that this was going to be our new reality, and that autumn was not going to really come until mid-November. 

But this year, October came.

I went to a nearby spooky spot, about a week ago now, and to my delight, I could truly see reflections of Octobers past there. I went over to a tree, to attempt to take some pictures, and the fluttering of the leaves and the smell in the air immediately brought me back to a place I don't know if I've seen in years.

Suddenly I could see all of the things that made me love October and Halloween in the first place. Reflections of the farm visits and trick-or-treat nights and makeshift decorations of my childhood. I truly don't feel like I've been able to smell the leaves like this in years, and it brings me back to all of the years spent drawing ghost faces on little white trash bags, creating my own decorations because the real ones were "too expensive" and "a waste". 

I go on walks and I feel the magic in the air, like I'm a character in a TV show or movie set on Halloween. The decorations have life in them once more, not backlit with sunlight as if they were put out in August. 

I spend more time outside this year than I think I have the last several Octobers. I watch the leaves flutter downwards, the trees progressively getting more bare as time goes on. I soak it all in, in a way I haven't been able to for awhile. 

Every picture I take feels like capturing a true moment in time; a memory book of the most wonderful time of the year. 

For some, I suppose it's not Octobering the way previous Octobers have Octobered. 

But for me, this is the most October that October has Octobered in the last several Octobers. 

And I'm glad to have it back.

Stay spooky, my friends. And enjoy these final days.