It’s chilly. I’m trying to come up with an end to a short story, or a beginning for a whole other stack of them that occurred to me recently. But I keep ricocheting back to that central point. Autumn has been here for a couple weeks, but as ever, my ability to process and internalize that reality lags woefully behind.
It’s not cold, of course. Cold is a different sensation entirely. Cold is less of a weather pattern and more of an unknowable entity, a looming, invisible force that seeks to extinguish everything underneath it. Realistically speaking, I don’t know cold all that well, but I know it well enough to fear it. And it’s not cold here, not by any means. Around 45 or so degrees Fahrenheit. Dusktime. Breezy.
The breeze plays an outsized role in this. The box canyon of my youth had more or less stationary air, and the slightest movement of it prompted locals to say “boy, sure is windy right now.” There were a lot of abrupt transitions when I moved to Seattle; changes in climate, culture, my own circumstances. But the one that stood out right away was the wind. Or, more accurately, the “wind.” I was taken off guard by just how blustery it seemed to be within my first couple days in the city, an amount that didn’t even register to the locals. It felt like a metaphorical slap to the face, a realization of “things are different here” that made me question my self-confidence.
In time I adopted the wind, and dropped the confidence.
Sometimes I wonder who I’d be today, without the doubt. Over time it’s become clear that the confidence I possessed back then was an illusion, a bubble of hot air filled by a careless, selfish woman. Based on nothing, resulting in little, it was more superficial preening than measurably defining. That trait and its aftermath haven’t been with me near as long as the doubt, though. A continual worry of inadequacy applied to any area in which one can be inadequate. My life of gentle, low-consequence failure has only helped that sensation flourish, and much of my adult life has been spent fearing that at any moment I could be dumped, fired, or left to starve.
My inability to recognize myself in the mirror has returned, and I’m betting these feelings are directly related. For now, at least, the breeze is soft, the temperature tolerable, and I want for little.