30: I'm so over the passing of time 🍂
just all of the sudden it's jacket weather?! 😤 (september 2022)
Iteration #30 of this monthly letter full of feelings. This issue's theme is: ⋆⋰☾ the shock of the seasons changing ☽⋰⋆
I started writing this letter in early fall when the air first started smelling cold. I dug my heels in to summer and I didn't stop ordering iced coffee. I guess I just take longer to adjust – the transition from one part of the year to another always seems to happen when I'm not ready, when I've just gotten used to whatever season we're in (it's true that the calendar provides a pretty clear schedule of when months begin and end, but time just seems to get away from me anyway). I had just started getting used to the shorter days, warming up to the idea that I could realistically try waking up with the sunset now that it rises a little later.
Then on Sunday morning when I congratulated myself for waking up at 8:30am (only to realize that daylight savings time had happened and I just... forgot that was a thing), the bitter reality of the seasonal change came back to me. Time keeps moving forward and an extra hour is never enough to catch up anyway.
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This time of year feels sticky; stuck clinging to long warm days, not ready for cold. Sticking to every embarrassing perception of myself that ever existed, every embarrassing ex lover or friend I let ruin my sense of self, sticky in my bones and ripe in my memories with the potency of cool fall air. August ends and all of the sudden it's fall. August with all of its sticky heat. Fall with all of its nostalgia – all of the familiar smells and cozy feelings.
All of its back to school and homecoming and starting over and first kisses at the trail of terror. With its nose piercings and breakups and crying on the subway. The leaves haven't even started to change yet in September; all we have is that cold inhale and a grey promise of colder days ahead. When I do see the leaves start to change, I'm filled with anxiety. All I can think of are all of the things I haven't done, all of the possible environments I could exist in and haven't documented at peak foliage! The yellow turns to red and it all feels so urgent.
The change is so jarring — it seems to sneak up out of nowhere. I’ve just gotten used to the way the summer air takes it's time running in and out of my nose, and then there it goes, shifting on me again. When anyone asks me how I am, I can't find an easy "good! you?" – I keep blurting out something along the lines of: "the seasons are changing & it reminds me of the passing of time! I hate it!" They give me this deep sigh and raise their eyebrows, then I say "I'm so sorry for the existential crisis but thank you for the coffee!" and I run away embarrassed at how much I've revealed about my own fragility.
INESCAPABLE NOSTALGIC AIR
Every time that piercing fall wind hits my nose, I feel every version of myself I’ve ever been. It’s like the September air holds some kind of nostalgic grip that forces my mind and my body to hold every feeling I’ve ever had at once when the wind hits just right. The potency of fall air. The way it seems to run over your arm hair and trail up the back of your neck, reminiscing on times you let someone in who didn't treat you like the tender thing you are. The way it fills your warm lungs to the very brim, poking it's sharpness into the tip of your chest and reminding you that you're going to reach your last day on this earth eventually so why do you keep wasting your precious time thinking about all the what ifs and wrong turns? Why can't you shake them, still?
I smell a bonfire in a stranger's backyard, traveling along the wind, following me down the street I live on — a street that’s brand new to me. I have never lived in this town before, but I’ve lived in New York State my entire life. Maybe if I lived anywhere else the change of seasons wouldn’t feel so alarming. I tell myself I’m lucky to live in a place this beautiful. A gust of wind rips a red leaf off a tree and it dances in front of me before hitting the ground, I let myself feel grateful; it does feel so nice to smell this very specific campfire air.
Right when I let my guard down and sit in the gratitude, it comes like a slap in the face: the thick smell of car exhaust hits my nose between hits of crisp coolness. I'm back in your car. I'm gripping the passenger seat. I'm looking outside my mom's window waiting for you to drive by. I'm in a parking lot waiting. I'm in my bed hearing your car drive by. I'm looking over my shoulder wondering where you went. I'm anywhere at all feeling you staring over my shoulder. I'm second guessing everything I've ever done. It's a grey fall day and I'm at your apartment you shared with a girl I knew in high school. I'm in my childhood bedroom with the light of the full hunter moon hitting my face. I feel sick; I want to rip this feeling off my bones, scrub myself clean of this incessant recall.
I’m trapped for a moment in 2009 — held hostage by the feeling of falling in love with a con artist. Then I’m in my first apartment a year later, running away, terrified and paranoid — checking my phone and checking over my shoulder, always on the verge of tears. It’s September 2013, and I'm trying desperately to run back in to her. I’m crying on the 6 train, begging them to come back to brooklyn with me. Im at a party in college crying, I'm at a bar crying. Im in high school, nervous someone would notice me looking over my shoulder too much so I keep my eyes forward and walk with my arms covering my neck so he can’t grab it. I smell the bonfire again and I’m back at my first homecoming, holding hands with someone who’s interest in me felt like a death grip.
MOMENTS OF DISTANCE
Sometimes I take the passing of time so personal. The audacity of time to keep moving and moving through grief and love and mania and depression and and and? AND?! But this seasonal reminder of the spiral of time reminds me that it's all still there, somewhere (even when I'm desperate to get away, to gain some distance). Surprised to find that all of those feelings still live inside of me, that they’ll rush back to the surface as soon as I smell something familiar or breathe this liminal air. How does it feel like I'm always running out of time but never doing anything? I'm being mean to myself, hurting my own feelings for no reason. I'm not sure what I think I'm supposed to have done by now – fill up my world with enough luckiness to drown out the mistakes? Well, haven't I?
There is this moment in Everything Everywhere All At Once, where the main character sits in this perfect feeling for a moment – you know that FEELING where everything just feels like it's in the right place? It's how I feel sometimes at golden hour when the sun hits a flower a certain way, or when someone I love tells me something they love about me. When things just kinda *feel right* and you just want to settle into that feeling – hold on to it for as long as you can. Is this what it means to feel present? All of the moments you've had and people you've been seem to come together for a moment, hovering in space before another thing changes. Then, of course, time keeps moving and things shift and we're brought back to the tension between before and after. In the movie, you feel this perfect moment that lasts about as long as a deep breath, and then the character is brought back "down to earth" as they say, and their daily life keeps going. That's what it feels like! Are we just always chasing that golden hour big breath connected stillness?
I’m a different person now, driving myself down the highway. Who I was back then wouldn’t even recognize who I am today; I used to dream of being this girl, having a voice that pushes past the knot in my throat. Then why can’t I shake the feeling of being held hostage in the passenger seat of your car every time I go past the speed limit?
I scream it: “I AM A DIFFERENT PERSON NOW.” I'm alone in the car so who cares? What's the difference really between yelling at myself and singing along to the radio? I notice my fingernails digging into the steering wheel and I let out a breath of air I only just realized I’d been holding in. I don’t fucking need anyone to drive me around anymore. I feel the sun hitting me through the windshield in a way that feels just for me. For all my whining about time getting away from me, it really has. There was a time when I couldn't imagine this life. A time when I would have made myself small enough to fit everything I ever wanted into your station wagon. I am so far away from the pressing weight of heartache on my chest. So far away from breathing in smoke. I can breathe here.
There are so many beautiful things about fall, and I do feel overwhelmed that I won't soak it all in enough – just won't be enough. But I drive alone for hours feeling the perfect temperature wind on my skin and I don’t even mind the sound that our old car makes when I drive with the windows down. The sun hits every single leaf on 1-90 perfectly.
☁︎ What versions of you are you dreaming of becoming? What versions of you are you dreaming of escaping? ☁︎
⋰ If you'd like to read previous newsletters, they are archived here.
This newsletter was started in the Onondaga & Haudenosaunee + finished in the Munsee Lenape & Schaghticoke territory. To learn more about the stolen land you're occupying, visit native-land.ca ⋰
