I never did much like September. Never. There�s something about this month. Something cruel and unrelenting. You know that feeling; It�s that person that all your friends love and that you know that you should love too, but you can�t, you just can�t, because fuck, her smile � that smile � is so damn wrong. Wrong in every way, in every shape. Every form. She�s seen something that you haven�t seen, and she knows something that you don�t know. Something you�ll never know and she�s happy enough to part those threadlike lips and show you her ashen, and still perfect teeth. She�ll let you see it. She knows that you can, and that the others can�t, and she�s willing to make you suffer. Just because she can. Just because you can. What it is, is difficult to say. Maybe it�s not any one thing. Maybe that�s the problem, maybe it�s nothing at all. That�s what makes this so difficult. She�s not unlikeable. She just doesn�t click. And what�s a friend who refuses to fit with you? Is she really a friend at all? It�s the same as having a soul that doesn�t quite fit your own body. It�s your own essence, your own core, and it rejects you with so much more pitilessness than you ever could�ve believed feasible. If the world were black and white, she wouldn�t be black. She wouldn�t be white. Lord, she wouldn�t even be grey. She�d be brown. That brown-grey that wears a name tag that cuts out half of its double barrelled name, tries to just be grey, like it�s grown out of its own name, but not quite its own colour. It looks to be a dull, monochromatic shade, but really, with a little bit of perspective, you can tell that it�s still brown. Always has been, and no amount of adjustments to its name will every rectify that. September�s the month that comes along, right when summer�s retreated back into itself. The days become short, much too short, and time � all of a sudden, time is just another excuse to get on with the things we do. There is not happiness and there is not sadness. There isn�t any fucking emotion, but damn, who cares, because all of a sudden the world is red yellow orange brown and man, it�s fucking Autumn already. Like it�s supposed to either make your world or break your heart. Like it�s supposed to make you feel something. But you can�t, can you? You find that it just rains all the time, and the wet, sodden, squelching, dirty brown leaves make the roads slippery, and you hear along the way about some guy who crashed his van because he was driving too fast on some back, winding road, and you don�t know him, you never knew him, but you feel a little sorry about all the things you�ve ever done wrong all of a sudden, and you can�t really pinpoint why. This is September, through and through. I suppose I could really cut September some slack. After all, it�s got a lot to live up to. The long, carefree days of summer � who can compete with that? September will always be the one that will take every last little portion of that away. No more excitement about what we�ll do this summer, because we�ve gone and wasted it, just as we always do, and we�re left with September with its surprisingly frigid mornings and unexpectedly abridged days. September�s back to the real world time, and real world time means real world fears and real world anxieties. It means real world problems. It means those difficult conversations that you find yourself unable to instigate, and so, you let this dejection build and build and build until it�s thirty years later, and you can�t think of any better way to spend your days than in a cheap, wooden box six feet beneath the first layer of cold, damp soil. It�s paying those registration fees for �free� education and feeling the pinch in your wallet as Christmas edges ever closer. It�s the trees forgetting who they are, their leaves falling more and more until all that remains is a lanky, fragile skeleton that will too eventually fall away. It�s between two and three in the morning and I have no idea what date it is, but I do know the month, and I�m not happy. I�m drunk. No, not drunk, I�m drunk drunk. I�m squinting at the clock for the umpteenth time because every time I check, I can�t seem to take it in. My short term memory was never much worth a damn. Time changes anyway, it passes, and everybody you�ll ever ask will tell you that it always passes at the same speed. Science. They�ve proved it. But what about relativity? Sundays are the longest days in each and every week. September the longest month in each and every year. Science tells me that that�s not true, but fuck science. Science never gave a shit about how I feel. Science argues with itself just as much as the rest of us do. I don�t know. I just don�t know. I�m confused. These days are passing slower and slower and sometimes I can feel and sometimes I don�t. I don�t know if it�s because I refuse to, or if I just can�t. Either way, it doesn�t change the fact that it just doesn�t happen. No, not anymore. I spent the past evening at a friend�s house in a fog of blue grey smoke. Each and every room was a labyrinth, and I waited almost seven hours for that fog to pass. But it never did, not once, and it won�t. It�ll be the same if I ever go back. I always tell myself that I won�t. But I always do. I can never say these things with conviction. I know that my words are not who I really, truly am. This friend, she�s got blonde hair and blue eyes and she used to have crooked teeth but an orthodontist fixed that right up for her, and now you can look and you can look but you can never find a physical imperfection, and her personality used to be like that too. Everybody talks about her in code, she�s the blonde, and everything�s a positive statement or a positive remark, even the negative ones because we all know that they�re just jealous and they can�t bear to face it. She�s the blonde, though. The blonde? Our appearances own us. It�s not that she has blonde hair, it�s that she is her hair. She is blonde. The blonde. You�d describe her to a blind man as the blonde, and he�d know which one you were talking about. He�d just know. He�d have to. I tell people that I met her when I was twelve years old. She showed up at my door on October 31st of that year, all those years ago, with a mutual friend of ours. I�d stayed home with my parents, I guess I was getting to feeling a little old for trick or treating and it seemed like the only other alternative. There she was with her blonde hair, the blonde hair. Her and her brother and our friend Hannah and she had on fake nails that were much too long for her to touch anything without it being an effort. Nails that were too long for her to touch anybody without slightly damaging their skin, and I distinctly remember that for that, she felt immensely guilty. Those nails were painted red, and I threw her little brother some chocolates and sweets, some kind of reward for him having dressed up as some kind of inconsequential, not-so-scary monster and for having made me drag my feet to that door instead of continuing to watch TV. I felt old back then. Old in the sense that I wasn�t a kid anymore but that I wasn�t yet an adult, and looking back, it wasn�t such a bad place to be. Sure, I was a kid, but I had opinions. Opinions that, in retrospect, meant nothing to anybody other than myself, but still, they were mine, and that�s pretty much all that really mattered. I wasn�t wearing a bra for all that long when I�d turned twelve, and I still hadn�t been blighted with the monthly curse, but for all the world, I was old, and getting older. That was the first time that I went to her house. They dragged me out that door and I must�ve called out something to my parents because I never went much of anywhere without first telling somebody, but in the end, that�s where I found myself. I don�t remember walking up the hill toward her house with them, and I don�t remember if we stopped at other houses for more sugary poisons. I don�t remember what we talked about and I can�t remember anything about feeling shy or unwelcome or unwanted. I don�t remember if I lifted my feet when I walked or if I let them scuff against the pavement and I don�t remember being introduced to anybody or anything, but there I was. There we were. Her mother was having a cutesy hallowe�en party for the younger kids. You know, the kid kids. I wasn�t a kid anymore. We joined in though anyway, because it seemed like the kind of easy fun we could still have, the kind of fun where you sneak back to being a proper child and you think that it�s okay because it�s just this once, but really, it�s okay because you�re only twelve years old and to everybody else, you are still a kid. This is what you do best. I ate green ketchup that night. It looked like it would taste worse because it was green and ketchup�s supposed to be red, but it just tasted like ketchup. I remember it smelling different to normal ketchup, but even then, I knew it was all just in my head. In my head. A lot of things were just in my head, but nobody�d gotten around to telling me that handy little piece of information. No, not just yet. Basically, the only real things I remember from that night were her fake, red nails � a colour reminiscent of blood or ketchup, but the ketchup that night was green, and I wasn�t a kid anymore. That wasn�t actually the first time I�d ever met her, but it felt like it, really. It was the first time we properly spent any time together, even though we�d walked home from school together a few times. One child sized foot in front of the other. Hannah between us both. The only thing we ever seemed to have in common was our mutual love for our dear friend, and the fact that we shared the same first name. That Hallowe�en night, it was the first time we ever talked talked, and I wish to God that my memory would serve me better than it does, but it can�t. It won�t. Poignancy only ever comes about in retrospect, and at twelve years old, I hadn�t yet had much time for that at all.
I don�t know why I lied so much as a child. All I know is that I did. I think I liked school when I was young enough to not remember it. Or at least, that�s how the story goes. My mother used to sit in our kitchen and enlighten the neighbours with stories and anecdotes about how her little five year old Rosie would stay late after school in the hopes that the teacher would give her some extra homework when the others had left. It seemed like the only solution, really. Wait until everybody else had left, skipping out the door with their coats buttoned up wrong, their fingers mismatched with the fingers of their gloves. I asked on a few different occasions, or so the story goes, and each time the teacher would smile at me and tell me that it�d be unfair on the others if I were to get such special attention. Special attention in the form of extra work that I was actually going out of my way to ask for. I don�t remember it well enough to tell it as my own story. It�s about another girl from another time and another place � another girl who wore her hair in pigtails and could recite the alphabet backwards before she could write. What I do remember about being five is telling my teacher about a book that sat on the bookshelf in my parent�s room. The book with six hundred pages, or so I told it, the adult�s book that I read every page of, with thousands of words, every one of which I understood. I didn�t have the sense to see the cracks in my story. Not that I couldn�t�ve read that damn book. I was reading at the level of a ten year old, a girl twice my age, and even then, I could pronounce words that came from text that some adults even weren�t able for. But I would�ve come away with many more questions about life and living than I�d ever had if I�d completed such an arduous challenge, and nobody�d yet heard any of those curious queries. They knew that they didn�t exist. I was still in that bubble that comes hand in hand with being five years old. There was no hiding that. Another of my earlier memories is of being in my grandmother�s kitchen. Just her and me. My maternal grandmother. Oh how I loved that woman. She took care of me like no other and taught me to knit, even though it was really just sewing, and she fed me toast lathered thick with marmalade and butter, and ribs that I didn�t like the taste of, but I�d always chew them and run outside to spit them into the trees and end up going back for more. I always went back for more. I told her a lie once. I don�t even remember what exactly was the precise untruth, but I know that it was a lie because I remember the shame of being found out. The look on her face. That look in her bluest of blue eyes. The disappointment. She called me on it, and all I told her that I was only joking. And she told me no, that it was a lie. I felt so ashamed. But I lied anyway. That woman � my grandmother � her name was Kathleen and she was seventy four years young when she died. I used to think that that was old, and when people said that she was very young to pass away, I disagreed. She wasn�t too young to die. She was old. Old beyond living any life that�s not devoid of colour. I was wrong though. I felt discouraged and unenthusiastic about the life she was living as she edged further into her final years. I didn�t see any colour in her life. Nowhere, except in those eyes. Oh those eyes. They too were fading, and fading fast. I didn�t know it at the time, but her life was bursting at the seams, even still. Even as her eyesight left her, and her kidneys failed and her heart began the slow syncopated regression into stillness. I don�t know whether or not she was happy, but I could tell you stories about that woman, and you�d realise how bright and how full of affection and tenderness she was. She had a lot more to give but all of a sudden, there was no time left with which she could give it. She�d had seven children � three boys and four girls. My mother was the youngest for nine years until another uncle of mine was born, and his feet were both twisted at the ankle in such a way that they said that he�d never walk. But he did, you know, he did and he does, and you�d never even know. They lived in an old country house with acres and acres of land that her and her husband � my grandfather � had bought together for the then enormous sum of five thousand pounds. Hers was the first death that immediately affected me. I had seen dead bodies and I had cried for souls that had left their bodies, but I hadn�t felt it. I never felt a thing. The hardest part about her death, I found, wasn�t the fact that the world had lost one being that I had such a weakness for. It wasn�t the fact that I had to lather on the marmalade myself now. It wasn�t the not knowing what to do with myself. Not the feeding her cats as they wandered around aimlessly and lazily, stretching out in the hottest of hot suns, oblivious to the fact that their mother, their care giver, had breathed her last breath and that they�d never again see her, or lie in her lap or at her feet. They were oblivious. I wished to be so oblivious. But I could only wish. Things would�ve been okay if it hadn�t been all about her voice. I found myself lying on my back in the early hours of an insignificant morning in an unimportant time months after she�d left. I�d woken up in a stupor, a post-sleep coma, a daze. I don�t know what I�d dreamed or what I�d been thinking or feeling or what I knew or didn�t know. I didn�t know the day or the time or the year, couldn�t remember the colour of my eyes or why I bothered moving on from one day to the next. Didn�t know my own name. Didn�t know the significance of the flower I�d been named after. I never slept on my back. Never. I�ve always lain flat on my tummy, knees tucked up to one side or the other and that�s how I�d stay night after night after night, and it hadn�t failed me �til then. Here I was � sixteen years old, in the dead of night, lying on my fucking back of all things, and I was confused and lost and all of a sudden, I didn�t know where to look or how to lie still or how exactly to go about sitting up or even breathing. I couldn�t breathe. Her voice was gone, you know, and it shook me harder than many things would ever shake me again. I can still feel her words, see her bluest of blue eyes and remember the silhouette of her back as she stood in the kitchen, singing songs to herself as the sun set behind the trees. Even if I couldn�t remember, I�d have the photographs. The photo albums, bursting at the seams. The blue box with the colour negatives and the photographs that just didn�t fit. There are so many, and I have two regrets. I never did get to see a photograph of her as a little girl. And I never have managed to remember her voice again. These days are passing oh so slowly, and with it, the acoustics and the memories fade. It�s so, so slow, but you know, time�s relative, and she�s been gone far, far too long. Sometimes I sit up and I read because it takes away the memories that I don�t want to retrieve. It hides the fact that there are times that I just can�t recall, times that are moving further and further away with each and every time that I give into the temptation of once more letting oxygen permeate my lungs and my veins. I�m filling my own head and my own imagination with somebody else�s memories and half truths in some half-assed attempt at having a life of my own. But Christ. I find myself fifty seven pages into a six hundred and ninety nine page hardback copy of some relentless storybook and I hate, I mean I really hate the protagonist, the one I�m supposed to identify with the most. He�s as much a legend to me as is Jim Morrisson or Kurt Cobain or any other tragic icon I find myself unable to sympathise with.
