August is over

This morning the sky is cloudy, and the winds are strong enough to blow through the bathroom wall and cool my toes as I wash my hands at the sink. This morning is Monday morning. It is the first Monday morning in September. With the rush of the autumn winds returning, I can feel the breath returning to my lungs and the huge weight of August lifting off of my creativity. For the first time in weeks I feel alive - tired, tentative, tender, fragile, but alive. Sentence structure has become interesting again. Independent thought has become normal again. Hard work is beginning to look possible, interesting, maybe even inspiring. My heart swells with love for the autumn.
I'm not entirely sure when August first became such an anathema to me. As a child I hated the hot and humid weather of August in the DC Metro area. I marvelled at the fact I could become soaked in sweat while sitting still. Sometimes we moved my bed downstairs at night so I could benefit from the A/C that was for the ground floor only. Other nights I would lie spread-eagled on the bed with no pillow, no blanket, no covering of any kind, striving to have as little sticky contact as possible.
When I left home for Bluefield, 'Virginia's tallest town', I discovered a different kind of summer. The kind of heat I grew up with never came to those cool, high, Appalachian hills. The first August I spent back in the heat and humidity of my childhood saw the first great painful tragedy of my young life. Although that was nine years ago, and I have now recovered from that trauma, I have greatly disliked the month of August ever since. It always seems like oppressive space. Summer stalls and autumn hasn't started yet. Society seems to be holding its collective breath before the plunge of another academic year, and in the pause, I suffocate.
This year I did it properly. I choked, lost perspective and nearly gave up trying to make any independent life for myself. The dark gulf of despair loomed, casting its shadow across me for days at a time.
There are several things which have happened over the last few days that have contributed to the change in my outlook on life. The weeks of August, low, difficult and painful as they were, provided space for reflection and time to form a different outlook on life. So the foundation for a fresh start was in the difficult days of August, as perhaps it often is, but it takes the fresh, stiff breezes of September to make the fresh start possible. Not for me the inspiration of the delicate days of spring time. Each year new life comes to me with the dying leaves of autumn.