Seasons of change
Chapter 1:October 31st, 2026
Something is crawling up my ribs. Like a restless spider franticly searching for a way out. It’s been three weeks since I started my first job. For those three weeks an old friend or enemy has been regaining territory inside me. In my body and soul. I call her Lola, she is a showgirl. With a golden dress made of sparkling beads and a headpiece of majestic feathers on her head. She has been my companion, my plague for almost twenty-two years. She desperately tries to protect me from all the evils in the world. Although her intentions are noble, her methods are destructive yet subtle.
Change is one of Lola’s greatest fears. She wakes in terror thinking of the inevitable change that life forces us to experience. With change comes uncertainty and that is Lola’s fuel. She uses it to propel herself further into my mind and deeper into my soul. Uncertainty then leads to fear and so on. It must be the third circle of hell. A self-sufficient cycle of terror. As a child change is all around you. Everyday your mind and body changes, grows and develops further. In those early years of life, we accept change because we associated it with growth. Yet even this early on in life our surroundings start to teach us to fear change. We see it in the face of our mothers when they remember us as smaller and younger as they store away the clothes that don’t fit us anymore.
This seed of fear starts to grow and bloom in your teens. When you realize for the first time that this change is no longer celebrated but feared. What if you become yet another horror story that parents share in secret under the impulse of fatigue and a good glass of wine. Wild, rogue, unable to handle are just a few words often used to describe those big bundles of joy that were welcomed into the world. There is no era of life that thrives on the discomfort of change as your teens do. You change schools, you discover you suck at math and get your period for the first time. All gems of uncertainty and change to hand over to you angel from hell like Lola. She then plants these seedlings into your mental garden to harvest for haunting in future years.
Once you have survived all of this there is the cosmic joke called your twenties. The mental burdens of your teens are carried over into a new decade. Only now with higher stakes and greater responsibilities. Get a diploma and do it well. Alternatively, you can drown your sorrows in alcohol and parties. When you wake up the next day none of those sorrows have disappeared and you have gained a headache, or more embarrassments Lola can haunt you with for years to come. If you make it out of the maze of academics you are welcomed into the fifth circle of hell, or is it sixth? I lost count long ago. Welcome to true adulthood where you have to get a job.