The trees are dressed in bright yellow coats while all else has given up all colour and life. The sky looks cold in all its grayness and tiny snowflakes are falling almost horizontally in the freezing wind.
Autumn fills me with such melancholy. Maybe it’s because the season of adventure, magic and fairies is over. When summer is taken away from me the world around seems bleak. Maybe it’s because autumn has been the end of so many things. The end of freedom and dreaming because school starts and it’s time to stress over stupid things again, the end of relationships, the end of another era. I enjoy autumn and winter too, don’t get me wrong. But it’s with this feeling of loss in the background all the time.
The most beautiful moments in life are those when happiness and sadness coincide. Nothing in this life lasts forever. Even though letting go hurts you can be happy that you got to experience all that. Even when the pain of loss is unbearable you look back on everything with fondness and love. And that’s beautiful.
You’ve just gathered some immeasurably precious memories that shape you into something new. This is how we always carry with us everything we’ve experienced. It’s painful when a moment comes to an end but I will always keep my most cherished memories tucked safely in my heart. No one can take that away from me. It hurts because it’s meaningful. And meaningful is what most of us are after.
But what I just realized is that this tone of sadness and happiness together is present in my life every single day. The feeling shifts a little according to the seasons. Like in the spring I’m just exuberant. But in the fall it’s like everything I’ve ever lost greets me in every yellow leaf, every withering blade of grass, every miserable puddle and every snowflake floating slowly from the sky.
It’s as if I miss home. Even when I’m completely happy where I am, when I feel this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. It’s like this underlying feeling that that’s not all there is. I’m just a traveller making the best of what I’ve got in the moment. It can be good, perfect even, it can be happy. But there is some other place I long for, some place I used to truly call home. Something I’ve lost.
And it’s that longing that makes every single moment in my life so beautiful. Because even in the happiest of moments it’s there, the feeling of loss. The realization that just like all bad things, this too, this good, shall pass. I belong somewhere else, not this world. But I’m here to make the most of it. I long for home but my journey isn’t over yet and I plan to enjoy myself to the fullest.
Now, I know very well that this feeling I’m describing is most likely just the profound loneliness we all as human beings share. You know, the black hole in your chest that never goes away. Sucking in all light and specially love. The void that’s there because we as social animals belong together but can never truly connect with each other. We long for oneness, complete acceptance, understanding and assimilation with the other. At the same time wanting to keep our individuality in tact. Maybe in some fantasy and scifi filled future where we’ve developed telepathy we can achieve that and get rid of this abysmal crack in our hearts. But until then it’s for each of us to cope with alone.
Maybe my weird feeling of not completely belonging, like there’s something else out there, is just my way of interpreting my own black hole. Giving it a narrative that helps me live with it. And you know what. That’s ok. It makes my life feel more magical and meaningful, it fills my everyday life with beauty. If it helps my over emotional mind not to descend into actual depression, isn’t that exactly right? I’m a traveller, from a galaxy far far away, of times yet to come. Let me have my fantasies. They keep me alive.
I follow the moon to find a path away from the scorching sun
I follow the stars to my abode, it’s burning
I seize the moment to hear a story no ones telling anymore
The worlds forgotten, the words forbidden
– Sonata Arctica: The Worlds Forgotten, the Words Forbidden
