The Autumn Appreciation Society

Membership criteria: must love leaves.

We never dodge death. We merely postpone it every now and then – if we’re lucky. It’s the big, inevitable and unwanted surprise right around the corner. Terrifyingly prescient and unequivocally guaranteed.

Loss and change send my nervous system into freeze mode when physical immobilisation and mental shutdown combine to create a deep withdrawal. Retreating is something that my mind does in order to protect itself. So if I’m not going to be able to stop that happening, then choosing what I retreat into is perhaps the next best remedy. Experience has taught me that retreating into alcohol and food aggravates an already fractured emotional state. Numbing is temporary and pain finds a way of seeping back in, so more numbing is required. It’s a closed loop once this cycle begins, joined soon after by self-loathing and desperation.

During the past three decades I’ve received a lot of help from some very kind professionals in formal and informal psychiatric settings. This has been down to luck, privilege and postcode. But despite being In the System long-term my ”outcomes” (as they are described) are surprising to some people. There’s an expectation that I should be cured or problem-free after so much therapeutic intervention. And I understand why people think it. But still, it doesn’t always work like that. Becoming well isn’t linear. Sometimes progress looks like acceptance of a condition, rather than a curing of that condition. It can also look like managing a condition rather than eliminating it. And that’s where I’m at. Above all, progress for me looks like wanting to be here, when only three or four years ago I was attempting not to be here.

These days my choice of retreat is nature. It doesn’t save me from myself, but it certainly helps to calm me and distract me enough to be able to see outside the abyss when I’m there, and refocus my thoughts (along with medication). Again no leaps and bounds here, just small, steady, steps. Being in nature helps me to manage my conditions. I like the soothing feeling I get from being surrounded by trees and little else.

This isn’t a metaphor about the seasonal changes echoing the cycles and stages of our own life. Nor is it a claim that nature is the answer to everything, nothing is ever that simple, but it is a reminder to myself to appreciate it and not take it for granted – life as well as nature.

Here’s what I’ve been enjoying outside this week: the world of roots and fungi beneath my feet. Silhouettes of birds in the rowan tree at sunrise. The starlings that have returned to the garden in their more subdued winter coats; the iridescence has been replaced by hazy muted browns, and it looks just as beautiful. Looking skywards and finding that the sunrise had caught the underside of a kite wing. The colours that are normally in shadow turned red and shimmered in the light. And walking in nature with my camera and studying the vivid colours that are changing.

Feel free to join me, all are welcome. Hopefully you might also love leaves.