Starting in September 2022, I began a year-long floral self-portrait series to document my first year in New York. This is the October entry, “Buried in Change”
Change is afoot, as evidenced by the leaves that crunch beneath my feet in varying degrees of vigor. The autumn air is crisp, fresh; it bites in a way an invigorating springtime breeze never will. It’s fall in New York.
Fall is always a strange season for me. I welcome the change after sweltering, humid summer days, refreshed by the sun and time with friends. I’m settling in. The temperatures drop. Winter is on its way; we’re in the in-between, the not yet. It’s anticipation.
It is with equal measures dread and gloom that I await a gloomy winter. It’s jarring to go from life to death in just a matter of weeks. The leaves, vibrant as they are, float one by one to the ground, a ticking clock that somehow manages to forebodingly and cheerfully mark the passage of time, reminding me with every step that nothing stays the same. Life is but two things, endings and beginnings.
In my own season of life, I feel the change acutely, and some days, I wonder if I shall be crushed by it all, not unlike the way we trample the delicate leaves on a pleasantly warm afternoon. I am particularly, at this point, feeling like one of those worn-down ones, no longer freshly fallen from a branch, but rather soft and crinkly, no resistance left to give except for a half-hearted rustle beneath ruthless soles.
This autumn marks a new state, new city, new roommates, new apartment, new neighborhood, and, highly unexpectedly, a new job. Hardly six months after I had fallen into a new one, I was laid off at Laguardia airport the moment the plane’s wheels touched the tarmac. I’m quite sure you’ll never find so persistent a caller as HR when they’ve decided to let you go. I had 15 missed calls.
If the city, the roommates, and community were all to be expected in this new salad, the layoff was the dressing—unexpected (when would it not be?) and always avoided if possible. I was already bending under the weight of such a daunting task that is starting one’s life over again. This was the gut-punch, the right hook, or whatever you wanted to call it.
Some days I feel completely buried under it all, a leaf in the pile, barely perceptible, peeking through. Other days, I’m reaching, striving, grasping. For friendship, for belonging, for meaning in the mess. And still on other days, I find myself with open hands, reluctantly ready to accept the cards I have been dealt, to make the best of the leaves that have fallen in my path, into my palms. Despite the melancholy and defeat I often feel, I know that though the days seem dim, I will learn to swim in this sea of change.