Long Nights

It is November, and in my part of the world the days are getting shorter. There is fog in the air every morning now, and only sometimes the sun manages to fight its way through.
Most birds have flown south, to warmer places. Here, the last leaves are falling, and first frosts make us realize that summer is gone without a trace and winter is beginning - the cold and the dark.

I was born in November, and when I was little, my father used to say: "It wasn't a stork that brought you as a baby, but a crow." And even though I never really believed in the stork story, that sentence always made me feel slightly doubtful about my background.
Then my birthday would be planned, and I envied my classmates and friends who could celebrate their birthdays in summer, when we could play in some garden and have some ice-cream in the sun. An indoor children's party in foggy November just isn't the same thing, even with ice-cream (which made stains on clothes and on the carpet anyway and wasn't very popular with mothers).

These days I am grown-up, and birthdays are no longer something to look forward to; year after year they are becoming more of a thing to endure, or even to dread; a thing that makes a depressing November even more gray.

The week after next I'll be older once again. And oh man, am I depressed.
I wish I could follow the birds to warmer and sunnier places, with cheerful people and happy sounds. Today I only heard the occasional croaking of a crow outside of my window - and it made me feel as if the d**ed animal would be cackling cynically at my self-pity.