A Difficulty.

I was in my kitchen today when I caught a fleeting glimpse of something fluttering outside the window. It moved like a butterfly, which surprised me because late October is not a time for butterflies in Britain. By the time I turned to look at it properly, it had gone. But then I saw several more, and watched as they danced a butterfly dance in the space formed by my kitchen wall and another that runs at right angles to it. And, of course, they weren’t butterflies; they were small, desiccated leaves caught up in swirling eddies of breeze created by the respective angles of the two walls.

So what did I make of these impostors? I made ghosts of them, shrivelled corpses of the Red Admiral and Peacock butterflies that graced the flower heads in the summer, now risen and returned to perform a lepidopteran danse macabre in anticipation of the coming season. And I sensed a note of the sardonic in their shameless impersonation, for they were mocking me with the knowledge that the dark time is here.

The period between November and January is usually a dark time for me, and it seems to have started early this year. It’s a time of frequent dips into the pit of despond. On several occasions the depression has lasted the whole three months, although that’s unusual and last year I was spared it altogether. It’s a time when acquaintances make themselves scarce, and I don’t blame them one jot for that. Ironically, it’s also a time when I push people away, sometimes quite aggressively. I’ve come to think that perhaps it’s a defence mechanism, because the pre-emptive strike at least gives me some control over the sense of abandonment. People can’t desert you if you’ve already thrown them out. Only the truest of friends refuse to leave, and I don’t need a whole handful of fingers to count the number of those I’ve had.

Accordingly, I’m not sure what this blog will bring over the next three months. It might be nothing out of the ordinary. I might have a good winter this year. Tomorrow I might be writing silly ditties again. At the moment, however, the unwelcome little imp is sitting on my shoulder and threatening to make a nuisance of himself as usual.

Please excuse my candour. As I’ve said in at least two previous posts, that’s what this blog is for. And if it sounds overly dramatic to anybody, that’s just a matter of style. There’s nothing dramatic about the experience. It’s just something miserable to observe and get through.