Autumn Season

Ever since I was a little girl I have always loved the autumn season. I don't know whether it's the beautiful turning of the leaves on the trees, raking them up in the front yard into large piles that you can jump in. Maybe it's the hot cocoa with little chocolate clumps and marshmallows. Perhaps it's the TV specials, the pumpkin bread, the days getting shorter and colder, letting me know that just a few more months and winter will be here.

Maybe, though, it's because I know Halloween is right around the corner. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday and I've never been fully certain as to why. It could possibly be the mystery of it all. Sure, Halloween has its origins in so many different religions and countries but who's really certain where it truly started? Who is sure what Halloween truly is? If we dress up as all these different things--monsters, goblins, ghouls, vampires, witches, ghosts, surely they had to exist at one point or another.

St. Nick was real wasn't he? He may not be now but there was an actual St. Nick. Who the fuck knows where the Easter Bunny came from or even the Tooth Fairy. St. Valentine and St. Patrick were real. Maybe...maybe the things we emulate on Halloween are real as well.

Most people will tell you Halloween is fantastic because of the candy, others will tell you it's the haunted houses or just the dressing up in general. When I turned thirteen, my reason for loving Halloween became,

I can go out there and be me, without being judged. Without people being afraid of me.

On my thirteenth Halloween, I found out that I was a witch. It was when my training was meant to begin. My Mother sat me down and started telling me all about the little things that tipped her off to me having powers all throughout my childhood. Things that, I'd been too young to notice happening myself. It gave me a sense of relief though, that I didn't love this time of year and the holiday Halloween itself for no reason.

It's literally in my blood. Life hasn't been the same for me since then. It's been three years and it's now my sixteenth Halloween. In two years, when I'm eighteen and an adult, my training should be completed. I feel like that I've had my nose shoved into becoming the very best witch that I can be for the last three years.. This Halloween, I want to go out and have fun. This Halloween, I want to go out and just be me.

One little problem though... magic is supposed to be a secret. If mortals were to see us openly practicing magic, well, they might think of us as the dark kind. Which of course, I am no such thing. But it's so hard...being able to do little things and being so proud and not being able to share it with your best friend. I'm sixteen, I'd love to have a boyfriend...but with that would probably come problems.

I can see him now, trying to take me out for a date and I'd have to skip because I'm late for an other worldly lesson on witchcraft with my Mom. Witches just probably aren't cut out for dating... unless they marry one of their own kind.. I don't know how Mom did it with Dad; how he fell in love with her for who she is and stayed with her and they even had me, after he knew about her secret.

He truly loved her, I suppose. Dad died when I was much younger, around five years old. I still remember going fishing with him and spilling all the worms all over the dock and trying to get them all scooped back into the container. Dad never got mad at me, from what I can remember. I should have known I was a witch...anytime I get upset, thinking back to Dad... things tend to explode.

Anytime I get mad...things break. I've learned to control that over the last three years. Let's hope when and if I do get a boyfriend, the butterflies in my stomach don't turn out to be real or something, from the magic... Maybe I'm worrying for nothing. I probably am. Worry-wort, that's me.