| I came home last night. Through the autumn leaves and cooling air that wraps you up and makes you think of every fall that came before this one. Every dry leaf that crunched under your foot as a child. My favorite part of fall was always the name. Now it's starting to get just a little scary.
It's amazing how a month can turn you inside out before you even realize it. Before you can even look around you and notice that everything else is just the way you left it, cool and calm and smelling of disinfectant, while you sit in a corner and regroup.
This weekend is for locking myself up and dealing with feelings, turning them into thoughts. The urge to create. The urge to destroy. The urge to wear mittens all the time, even in bed. The urge to sing under my covers.
As I came through the door, my mother hugged me for the first time in a few months. I was still holding my bags, the very same bags I had lugged down Dundas street on the trek to the bus station that seemed to take years, and they weighed down my shoulders, making the hug feel heavy and defeated. I have this ridiculous expectation, this hope that she will automatically know what to do, what flesh to put where, which softness to press against my clumsy joints. I really wanted to enjoy that hug. And I did, for a while, until she did the awkward patting thing and I had to tell her to stop.
I don't really know what to call home anymore. What to cling to. What to leave behind with the teddy bears. I can't sleep because my bed is not my own, and I can't eat because the food only makes me angry.
But sometimes, despite all this, I feel better than ever before. Change is a good thing, taken the right way. I never have been quite at home in the world, and it's only now that I can think of this without clenching my fists when I think no one is watching. This is not such a bad thing, really. As long as I feel at home in my own skin. And I'm starting to. I have to. This is what I have to work with.
I've never been one of those people that could stay in one place. At least not in the physical sense. I can stare at a wall for hours, unmoving, and then squirm through an hour-long lecture in the same day, trying not to look too conspicuous to those taking neat notes around me. Sometimes I wish I could sit still like them. And sometimes I thank God that I can't.
I don't remember fall ever being this colourful. | 
