By William Louderback
With the panic of adjusting August out of the way, we’ve moved on to what I may consider the most uneventful month of the year.
For me, September is many things. It’s part of a dark Green Day song, an equally bitter Fall Out Boy track, and a surprisingly happy one that goes ba-de-ya-de-ya. It’s the buildup to my own ‘best time of the year.’ When I was little, and hated school as most young children do, I saw school as a simple chore with a beginning and end. A long slog from August to June was all it meant to me, with a little breathing point at Halloween, my favorite holiday, and Christmas. When I got older, though, and once I had turned my childish and mature feelings alike into a vessel for writing, I began to enjoy existing between these times just a bit more. August meant a sudden change with the school year, whether welcome or unwelcome was debatable, but interesting nonetheless. October started to seem fun all month long, planning for the big day, decorating all thirty-one days and binging horror media like a man possessed. November meant the cleanest skies I’d see all year. But September… I’m not sure about September. To me, September is a metaphorical liminal space. A threshold, a month caught between. The shock of being dropped back in a classroom has faded, the real fall fun of October is waiting behind thirty days to begin. September has been a unique experience for me, a month of nothing to note. In that way, I find myself delving deeper into writing on this month of all months, finding comfort in the only thing that seems worth doing, in a month where nothing happens. But by October first, I look back at this odd little month in my life, a small speed bump in a smooth progression of my year, an empty waiting place, like a vacant storefront in a long and narrow strip mall, empty and silent aside from the remains of Fourth of July confetti and the pumping sound of Halloween music through the wall. In that way, I suppose the purpose I’ve found for September is reflection. And in that way, I’ve hit the sweet spot. I don’t long for this vacant month to end anymore, but I won’t mind seeing it go.