Winter is coming.

 

Winter is coming. The days get darker, the nights get colder and it feels impossible to get up in the morning. It’s also when daylight is really scarce, especially in the North of England where I live. Autumn, for all the cool colours, conkers and great camera days – is usually WET. It’s a lot of people’s favourite time of year, but not for me. It always brings back those days of going back to school, going to work when it’s dark and coming back home when it is…. Dark. It saps and drains and smothers your energy. I also find myself drinking way more red wine! I guess it’s not all bad.

Autumn is also a metaphor. It’s a time of change, of decay, of what feels like a forced rest. The trees give up their leaves, saving themselves for the springtime, as do the flowers and the plants and those tomatoes you tried growing this year. For me, Autumn is usually a really busy month, but not this year. I have been a chrysalis this year.  Like butterflies, I’ve always worked in cycles. It’s been a frustrating way to live. I start out small, build and build and build, become something I can be proud of, happy of, only to see everything just…. falter. It first happened during my A-levels, then my second year of Uni, then the year after graduation, then again at the end of Masters, and now, it is happening again. The leaves fall of the tree, and I am bare. I look back and criticise myself, chastise myself. “Why are the leaves dying again??” “Why are things getting bad again??” My life hits the brakes, I lose friends, direction, confidence and my place in this world. It becomes Autumn. This periods where just everything seems to die. This time though, I’m trying to see it all a bit different. I’m trying to channel a new concept.

Transience. Times come and go, good and bad. The idea that everything is transitional and temporary is an uncomfortable concept for me, but it’s one I find quite empowering. Unfortunately, that’s not the way my brain was ever really wired. I hold onto things. Really tight. When I find something good in my life, I grasp it. I hold onto it. This works really well. I am a good friend, a committed ally and a supportive colleague. The problem comes when I start to think that the good, the things I want around me, are starting to fail. That my perception is that summer is over, and autumn is beginning. I can become desperate; I overwater my friendships like I could overwater a cactus. Mistrust can build with the people around me and my innate phobia of losing things ultimately drives a wedge through everything. The opposite effect happens. I have an overwhelming drive when it comes to these things. I will do whatever I can to keep them. But it just pushes them away.

For me, I have seemed incapable of understanding that autumn is temporary. It is seasonal. My personal autumn may pass, something akin to winter may follow. Destitute, colder, with more hardship. Spring is just around the corner, even if I sometimes fail to see it. New growth, new opportunities, new beginnings.

If you too, are stuck in a figurative autumn, as well as a literal autumn, then I just want to remind you.

It may not get better anytime soon. That’s OK.

Those things you cared for, wanted, believed in, may wilt and die. That’s OK

But new growth will return.

Springtime will return and with it, so will the good times.