Halloween is over but it is not yet the festive season. People who were excited about autumn are already looking forward to whatever comes next. November is like the nothing time between Christmas and New Years when you don’t know what to do with yourself except wait for the next thing to happen. It’s a time for tapping your fingers on the desk and staring at the rain falling on the window, waiting for a miracle.
Sometimes you get so impatient for something to happen that you can’t wait any longer and do something drastic like cut your own bangs. That’s what I did. The people in my apartment are digging up their gardens. Others are already putting up Christmas decorations. Everything is falling apart, going too fast and too slow at the same time.
I am still trying to finish reading Dracula which seems almost stupid now because Halloween is over. I started it at the beginning of October and then I got a bad cold and didn’t feel like reading for eight days because I didn’t feel like doing anything. Reading Dracula in November is like being stuck in the past except that a lot has changed since I first opened the book. It’s almost impossible to continue reading a story where you left off when nothing makes sense anymore because you’re a different person living a different life. Might as well move on, might as well start over.
I used to think nothing ever happened in November but that isn’t true. In November, everything becomes a little bit greyer, a little bit more regretful, a little bit colder. Some people become that way too. Everything is a sad song. My plants are dying. Ghosts are born, parties are cleaned up, lights flicker for a brief moment of hope and then disappear. We are haunted by old hurts and terrorized by new ones.
Yesterday, it was dark by 5pm and I wished I was going to a warm pub to sit next to a fireplace and drink a glass of wine. Instead, I went to my room which is full of pumpkins and candles and unfinished books and dead plants, trying to wish November away in the same way people wish away ghosts and rainy days, hoping for the impossible.
Things I Learned Growing Up 