Autumn Sonata

Taken April 2021.

The mornings have been more chilly, making me want to stay in bed till noon to keep warm. I like these mornings. They’re quiet, calm, still. It’s when I can let my thoughts drift and fantasize about the future.

I’ve been doing night walks recently. The air is crisp, and the streets don’t feel so intimidating. I used photography as a refuge last year to ease my anxiety and depression. For an hour, I was focused on something other than work or the doom felt in the world about dying from a killer virus. It allowed my brain to defragment my jumbled thoughts, and I think it translated through the photos.

Photography also makes me feel closer to someone who lives thousands of miles away from me. The sharing of such an intimate hobby makes it feel as if we’re speaking a language only the two of us understand—its ours and ours alone. Kind of like when long distance lovers feel a sense of closeness when they’re looking at the moon and wonder if the other is looking at it at the same time type of thing? That’s what photography feels like for me these days. It’s become a respite in a world that feels more disconnected from itself. The connection I have with this person has weathered through the distance, the pandemic. I just want to be physically closer to them, and that’s the one thing that aches my heart.

Lately I have been thinking about my relationship to not only people, but to things. My fear of commitment, permanence, specifically. I feel like I’m always bracing myself to leave or for a good thing to end. There’s a layer of protection I keep so if I don’t decorate my desk at work, it means I won’t get too attached or too comfortable and walk out when I please or not cry if it were to come down to me getting fired. In the past few years I’ve found myself entrenched in the Leftist community and within the past year I’ve felt completely alone in it. Something’s changed, or maybe I have changed. Maybe I don’t want to be forever angry, or pessimistic that nothing can change. I don’t want to be so hateful, petty. I just want to enjoy the things I enjoy since it’s so hard to find happiness these days. I’ve been excising myself from these communities and I wonder if it’s because I truly don’t want to be involved in such a toxic community or if I’m protecting myself by leaving first before it fully leaves me.

My problem is I feel too much, which makes it that much easier to hurt. The need to constantly feel in control and project strength only complicates this. I haven’t fully unpacked all of this but I feel this constant conflict within myself. Instead of processing these feelings, my immediate reaction is to just cut people off. Even at slight infractions. This obviously would create a lonely existence for me if I just keep cutting people off but I don’t know any other way. The thought of showing a sliver of vulnerability makes me fearful and anxious. The first step is awareness, the next step is change.

But this begs the question: How do I change?