Leaves are starting to fall off the trees and crunch beneath my feet. Autumn is my favorite time a year because of how beautiful everything is. The air takes on a new density for me in the fall. It doesn't feel like I'm crushed underneath the pressure of the heat like it does in the summer and it doesn't feel like my nose is going to fall off my face like it does in the winter. October is the month for me.

...At least it used to be.

The world is really weird when you get diagnosed with depression. The things you like, you become indifferent to at best, and the things you dislike...well, they become unbearable. I dropped out of high school last October. I spent all of last October wishing I would just drop dead like the leaves beneath my feet. I didn't, and I'm glad I didn't, but October is different for me now.

Someone pointed out to me that the smell of the fall is actually just the smell of everything dying. I can't get that idea out of my head.

I like to use October as a metaphor for my mental illness because October used to epitomize everything I loved about life and now I kind of dread it. It's still my favorite month. Things are still beautiful. But there is a foreboding air around October that wasn't here before.

Now of course, mental illness doesn't take a break so it's not like October ends and simultaneously so does my depression, but when the leaves change, I think about how quickly I changed, too. In October of 7th grade, my english teacher brought in donuts for my class having the highest average on the first major test. I still have that test somewhere. It had a bat sticker on it that said "boo!". But I wasn't happy with my 95 and now I was going to be fat because of a single donut. I skipped lunch that day, too, which would be something I'd do well into my junior year of high school, which meant I didn't have breakfast or lunch and I threw up a chocolate donut because I thought that single piece of food was going to make me gain 5 pounds. I was actually angry at my teacher for bringing in food. How dare she do something kind when I am clearly struggling, even though I never vocalized any of my struggles until I got into high school? The nerve of some people.

Things only got progressively worse from then on, and every October, like clockwork, I would do something drastic, leading to me dropping out and having a 3-month-long mental breakdown in which I lost all my friends and made everyone hate me.

I do think this October is different, though. It's the first October in 8 years where I don't want to jump in front of the bus instead of going to school. Baby steps.