Melancholy and Insanity…..
At least once a year, my mother goes crazy. It’s usually somewhere between November and January. She’ll get in this really manic stage, where she’ll get on these minimalist kicks and tear through the house throwing out anything unnecessary or that has acquired some bad memories or a personality of its own or something. Sometimes, she sells everything she owns even if she doesn’t need to, drinks like a horse, and cries about all things she doesn’t have that she wants, all things she didn’t do that she meant to do, and then she moves to Texas.
At least that’s how it used to go. She hasnt’ done anything stupid like that for like four years now, not since the last adventure (where we ended up homeless, yadda yadda sob story). I think it’s cuz she gave it to me.
Every August to October for the last three years or so, I’ve been going nuts. I quit my jobs, I hate everything, especially myself, I contemplate running away to Russia or Ireland or somewhere very, very far away and very, very rainy. I hate it. This time around, I quit my job and I’m ransacking my house throwing away/donating anything I don’t want or need, trying to organize my exterior world to achieve some semblance of order in my head. There are no piles in my house. There is no dust in the corners. I’m pulling my hair out because my bathroom is so old only a fresh coat of paint is going to cover up the age….and I’m this close to buying the paint and redoing the whole damn apartment. And I could do it too, right now, in like a weekend.
There are only two unsorted boxes of randomness in my house, two drawers that need to be cleaned out, and one cupboard that refuses to be organized even though I’ve tried at least a dozen times to make it stay that way.
I think it’s something about the way the Autumn smells. It smells familiar, sad, reminds me why I count Octobers the way some people count wrinkles. Just one more, I think to myself, just make it one more. I look forward to pumpkins the way most people look forward to Christmas lights, but I just like the way snow looks in the cemetery. And it has nothing to do with happiness or a lack of it. It isn’t depression in a clinical sense. Mine is a pleasant sort of melancholy without any cause, some deep sorrow that doesn’t impact my life in anyway, other than to fuel my imagination and love of nostalgia, and drive me crazy after the first full moon of August. I’m happy, but I’m crazy right now. Nuts. I’d wish for rain but my closet leaks, so I better not…
I’m also thinking about adopting another cat. That’d make three….
