Your Yearly Reminder That You Are Loved

You are loved. As we enter late September's runny-nosed, dead leaves, ever-cold autumn setting, it's important to note. Nostalgia comes in a change of season, and what else a melancholic time than fall. It's the time of death and decay, cold and sickness, which regrettably help push forward the warmness in us more than anything else.

We relax, warm up next to a fire, write Santa a letter forgiving him for what he did to us in our younger years, the bloody pig. We wait with the most keen sense of patience to honor the horrid racism and mutilation and rape Columbus bestowed to make this nation great. For if he had not made those sacrifices, we wouldn't have a 3-day weekend, Black Friday, and turkey stuffing. Nothing justifies those atrocities against Native Americans but if anything comes close it's turkey stuffing.

When I think of fall, I couldn't imagine something less savory than a seasonless setting. California with a lukewarm summer during what would be winter, Portland's snow season replaced by rain, it's sad to contemplate a life without the gloomy misery of an Illinois winter. When the cold comes, even the grass is depressed and hibernates. The birds fly away in v-shapes like World War II fighter jets flying in unison but they're fleeing imminent danger instead of engaging it.

It's the holiday season starting with Halloween. Even Halloween isn't bound to its grim sensibility, there's candy and children and people roleplaying silly costumes. People get to dress up for fun as seedy characters like a dominatrix. But what do dominatrices do on Halloween? Probably donate to charity. And charity's the season's spirit. The snow forces you indoors, making your home an igloo. Your forced into solitary confinement with your spouse or family, or pet. And you're forced to fall in love with them, for the first time or all over again. You get together and share warmth and bacterial viruses, like the highly contagious kinship brought on by this Stockholm Syndrome.

Through this gloomy mood, like a woman approaching her menstral cycle, is the onset of a new tune. And it reminds me of a sentiment I had, something to pass forth, and it's the following:

This is your yearly reminder that you are loved out there, by someone, probably several people, but at least by me. Probably not by that person you really like whose existence in your life would make it complete, but you are loved by me. No, most likely you settled for second, if anyone at all. And that first place grand prize you set your eye on, that high school obsession you wrote love letters to and later crumpled, to which they would've made the perfect envelope encompassing your soul's contents, an envelope that you got to lick shut and seal with a kiss, no, that person probably doesn't love you, but at least I do.