Autumn (Entry One)

Writing about my autumn thus far, as though it were pure fiction...

Autumn engulfed summer, the naked trees and grey skies eclipsing the delights of July and August. The streets of the city seemed cluttered, chaotic, with a fresh intake of students swarming in. Seeing their liveliness, their energy only served to allow me to feel the depths of my fatigue.

The autumn winds ate at the warm core of our relationship until that too, a final leaf clinging to its branch, fell upon the ground. 

The nights seemed infinite, without end. I would lay awake in bed nervously waiting for sleep to take me, yet no matter how drowsy I felt, sleep evaded me. Every second under those sheets seemed excruciatingly long and, on those occasions when sleep actually did come, it was punctuated with nightmares. 

When you were there in that bed with me, you aided me more than sleeping pills ever could. 

Managing work with such a deficit of sleep became exceptionally difficult. My emotional compass was deeply unstable, oscillating between anger and grief, rage and depression. I wanted to reach for medication, something to numb myself with but working 9 hours a day made it extremely difficult to get a GP appointment. 

Feeling the impulse to escape, to start again, is most horrible, I believe, when you know you are so firmly rooted in the reality you're living in. Your need to pay the bills shackles you to the job you hate and you become bound up in the life you've chosen. Adult life, it's almost like some demented version of Jenga... choose to move one more block in order to advance and you might bring the entirety of your life tumbling down.

Yet I remained not hopeful, not optimistic but calm. Sleeping patterns can be restored. Leases and obligations end. Jobs can be changed. Things that don't work can be brought to a close.

I'd developed genuine affection for my friends at work - a small cluster of people who I felt I could rely on. They were some of the most decent, compassionate, interesting people I'd ever had the luxury of meeting. They had become a de facto family to me and I cared for each of them the way you'd expect a brother to care about their siblings. When my well of strength was spent, drained, they would lend me some of their own. 

I stood, battered but composed, waiting for winter. Resilient.