The Month That Didn’t Announce Itself

It didn’t feel like a beginning or an ending. It just happened, and then it was gone. I didn’t notice it settling in the way people say months do. I only noticed it after.

I was fired from my job around then. It should have been shocking. It wasn’t. I remember thinking that I should feel something more concrete, anger, fear, relief but instead it felt distant, like news I’d heard about someone else. November didn’t feel real, and neither did I.

I didn’t sit in silence for very long. I kept moving. Onto whatever came next. There was a restlessness to it, not panic exactly, more like momentum without direction. I didn’t know how to discuss it with anyone. It felt too close to the anatomy of someone quietly coming undone and asking, “Are you okay?” is a dangerous thing. Sometimes people don’t want an answer, they don’t know what to do with one.

I’ve always thought of myself as someone in control or at least someone who appeared that way but that month, the line between intention and accident blurred. I would hear about my own nights secondhand, surprised by the version of myself that seemed to exist when I wasn’t paying attention. I like to believe I keep things together. Still, it’s difficult not to feel foolish when it’s your own behaviour that leaves you embarrassed the next morning.

None of it felt deliberate. It all felt reasonable at the time. Only later did the consequences arrive, quietly and without warning.

November was emotionally draining. In a way, it was good for me. I spent time with friends, drank more than usual and tried to talk and yet, it often made me feel stranger, more exposed. As someone who usually speaks, I found it hard to speak unless something softened the edges first. Once it did, everything came out at once.

I wondered if I had become someone else. Someone lighter. Easier to be around. Some people might call it fun. The problem with that version of me was how vulnerable it felt afterward. The next day, back under fluorescent lights, it seemed like a cigarette could quiet my thoughts long enough to get through the questions I didn’t want to answer.

I never saw myself as a slacker. If anything, I’ve always been trying sometimes from the outside, sometimes without a clear sense of where effort was supposed to lead. Growing up autistic, you’re often told you can do anything. That belief stays with you. It stayed with me but inside those offices, loud, faceless, insistent, everything felt flattened. It didn’t matter what I did. No one told me I was doing particularly well or particularly poorly. I was just doing something, and somehow that made nothing feel real.

Life became about logistics. Places. Schedules. Knowing when work was the next morning, the next week, the next month. It felt like a scramble, like I wasn’t doing anything for myself, only earning brief moments of rest from everyone else.

November said hello and left without explanation. My schedule didn’t change. I didn’t change. I kept believing I could become the person I imagined myself to be in that space, charming, capable, dependable. None of it worked. The harder I tried, the quieter everything became.

There wasn’t much guidance. Just words.

The only thing that ever felt like a reward was leaving the office and finding myself on a bus in the early morning, watching the city pass by, knowing I had to be back at work a few hours later.

That was November. It didn’t announce itself. It just passed through.