8-29

There’s an interlacing of the seasons and I’m in love with it. I can’t get enough, I’m obsessed, I’m infatuated, I can think of little else (as seems to happen when I fall uncontrollably in love). Light creeps down, peeking between the thick tree and brush where the boldest leaves are beginning to mimic the sun’s fading glow. Red sumac tinged with brown hangs heavy with vines, climbing persistently in defiance of their inevitable desiccation.

Now is my favorite time of the year, and I welcome it. Soon I’ll be in orchards biting crisp apples and sitting on the grass, wandering through mazes tan and gold and rippling in the wind, everything smells like cider and Jack and cinnamon and mulled wine and the twisted black wrappers of cheap candy. 

There will be white tents and jars of candles and I will smile and chat with strangers who will hand me crumbled green bills. 

I’m entering my own new season; I’ve been chasing an image of myself for years and now I’m catching up with Her. My chrysalis is cracking.

She’s watching my foot bounce frenetically and I can read her thoughts on her face.

I gesture to my large bag, where the soft top of a ball of yarn is eavesdropping. 

“I crochet now, when I go out; it helps my nervous hands.”

Nervous hands.

A curious tongue, my dentist once told me when I couldn’t stop exploring his work.

A sly grin. I didn’t like that. I can’t help that my smile pulls more one way than the other.

My body is an assortment of personalities I must try to control.

My crochet hook falls out of the bag while I am drinking cocktails and mispronouncing fancy menu items, and the busboy hands it back to me, confused, and I flush.

My fingers twitch now. I try to still my foot but the electricity must go somewhere. It’s autonomous from the rest of me, it’s a channel, a vessel, for the lightning in my blood.

She asks if I’ve ever been treated for my anxiety.

The white pills are smaller than I expect. She wants me to break them in half for now, but they’re small and delicate and it would be cumbersome to clumsily crush them, so I take it entirely. 

Depression and anxiety. It was smart to come, she says.

I tell her about the pills I took in another stage of my life, the ones that made me swim in and out of existence, and she’s horrified. Their purpose has changed since my worst times.

How many semesters did I complete--did I work two jobs or three?--while doped up on high doses of sleeping medication, purchased to make me not feel doped up and sleepy.

My foot vibrates back and forth but the rest of me is always still. I like the energy. I like the bright beautiful thoughts in my head--will they go dull and quiet?

I like the thoughts, but they are simply a response to the bright and beautiful things around me. The smells in the air and the way the light hits bark soft with moss. I will not lose these things but perhaps I will quiet the monster in my head that sharpens his teeth on me while I lie in bed at night, the lightning charging through my limbs and the dread settling into my thoughts.

I take the pill and I love the seasons and I succumb to inevitable changes.