I try to catch myself. As the autumn leaves start to fall, sometimes it feels like I do too.
Look at me! The window of this dusky classroom calls my name, the lecture droning on and on, my eyelids drooping heavier and heavier. I gaze out. The sun waves goodbye as she settles below the horizon at a mere 4:30 p.m., leaving me with nothing but another hour left of my seminar. I’m jealous of her ability to settle into bed so early.
As I exit the creaky building, I wrap my scarf a little tighter. With the streetlamps guiding me home, I focus painstakingly on the crunches of leaves on the sidewalk. My teeth feel like they’re about to chatter; my stomach starts to grumble. The weight of everything I need to finish tonight rests heavy on my shoulders. Juggling fatigue and midnight deadlines and unwarranted cold spells, everything I can usually put up with feels compounded in this pitch, pitch-black setting.
This first week of November feels riddled with rhythms of change, and I yearn for the small things that bring me joy—finding light in the pitch-black. It’s only been a few days, and yet the daylight-savings-induced darkness seems to eclipse everything that was once wonderful—early evening runs, sitting on the green after class, the simple act of finding joy in being outside, soaking in the pink hues of late autumn. Noon blurs into evening without warning, as the sun selfishly retreats into hibernation. I can feel seasonal depression creeping in, rearing her head as fall waves her white flag.
I continue searching for ways to adapt. After three years on this campus, I can’t help but feel as if I should have figured it out by now—like an early bird trying to learn the night owl’s song.
The sky feels too close, the world too dim. But I’m learning that there’s a solemn beauty in watching the world slow down around me. I begin to wake up earlier and earlier, welcoming the new, bright rays of sun at 6:30 to start my day. I embrace the darkness once she rolls around, focusing on silver linings rather than gloom. I sit by our dorm room window with my roommates, and we decompress, discussing the trials of womanhood and statistics exams. Our words float swiftly through the darkness, the quiet wind whisking away and filtering today’s problems through the window screens until they’re close to nothing. With the lights off, our stories fade away—unlit.
Our fairy lights illuminate the room. On my bedside table, my lamp sits next to my precious stack of books; through my window, a streetlamp monitors busy cars like a traffic guard. Headlights glimmer in the distance, a blinking reminder that the world is still moving, even beyond my view. Even in the dusk, there’s still light to protect against the looming void of the ever expansive universe above. There’s still a bright moon, her craters and caverns dancing to my worries, making them a little less scary. Each distant glow is a reminder that, no matter how thick the darkness feels, light is there—scattered and soft, yet enduring.
This season, the darkness brought me stress, worry, discomfort, and fear, but it also carried beautiful, blanketing waves of silence, stars, even the aurora—a much-needed cool down from this freakish winter heat and the pyretic friction of my own chaotic life.
Fall is not over yet—I’m lucky to still relish the glow of the carmine dogwood outside my window. Everything seems so trivial next to her burning red leaves. There’s not much time left; winter will arrive, mighty as she does, stripping the trees of their dreamy foliage. So I’ve decided to stop running from fall’s darkness. I love autumn for all her parts and her phases, even in the dark. I’ll turn around and start chasing, holding on tight.
In a month, when December rolls around, I’ll glance back at autumn one last time, before she, too, disappears with the sun. I’ll whisper my adoration into the dark, even though I know they’ll only echo. Because she’ll always be my favorite season. And I know when winter rolls around, I’ll never want to let her go.
