Decay, like Leaves

Fall days are what I remember from the past. The autumn leaves drifting down, apple orchards where I died a million times. New England is a room with the curtains drawn. No one comes out better for having survived the transition to winter.

My high school career was full of sickness. I was driven to appointments where I ticked off the appropriate boxes. The fall leaves stuck to my shoes, a reminder of the decaying of my mind. There is no happiness in making yourself small.

Freshman year of college came in the form of a windstorm I had opened my windows for. As I descended into the madness of an illness defined by starvation and hopelessness, I felt myself drifing away from the people I had already lost a long time ago.

Hope was my present tense and future tense. But in the autumn, the woods become starved of the company of leaves, and I too fell into the abyss of loneliness. Do the trees know they will once again be reborn again in the spring? It seemed far away, like Portugal, or mental stability.

Loneliness is not something to crave. It is dining halls where you eat alone, in the moments I waited between weighing myself, and in the moments I could feel myself leaving my body in conversations, I did not crave distance from others. Instead, I craved touch, a hug, a reason to stay in school. My college career was over after one semester of trying, and it ended with one email to administration in a cafe I loved, where I hated myself.

We all crave the companionship of others. In these trying times, the new normal is to be embraced, like accepting that winter is coming and the future is a chilly drive into the frosted unknown. We will hurt for it, but perhaps it is a reminder that we are meant to be together, autumn leaves like so many decaying promises of what's next to come.