holy lord, i love halloween. i know it’s very goth-girl-coffin-shaped-purse-pumpkin-spice-everything-halloween-as-a-personality kinda vibe to say that, especially now that everything around halloween is so normalized and practically norm-core, but my lord, all that aside, as embarassing as it is, i really do still love halloween.
i kinda feel like halloween was this one point in the years i would have growing up where things were good for me, or at least not as immediately painful as other times. i love costumes and dressing up and making things. i spent a lot of time with my mother making costumes and these are some very treasured happy memories from my youth. just something about tearing up old thrift shop clothes, putting out shitty plastic blow-molds, carving pumpkins, and horror movie marathons on tv. i remember eating so much candy my tummy would hurt.
as i grew older, and began to fit in less, i began to feel like halloween was one of the days of the year in which i could truly be myself as a weirdo and fit in, because everyone else was being weird too.
over the past few years as millenials have aged and the rise of nerd culture really began to take off, halloween has become pretty commercialized and it’s now enjoyed by way more normies than i remember, and hey, that’s cool man, i’m not hatin’.
i do sometimes feel like there’s a bit of stolen valor when i see the girls from high school who kicked my ass on the daily for being goth, acting like they’re big titty goth gfs now, and it’s like yeah cool man, you almost broke my jaw that one time because of how i was dressed, and bullied me to the very brink of the capacity of my mental health but yeah show me your sick (?) sleep token tit tattoo and tell me more about how you “have always loved goth music”, yeah that’s fine.
ANYWAYS – i had the best spooky october this year and it reminded me of why i love the season and halloween itself. the weather, the longsleeves, carving jack-o-lanterns with my besties, throwing together costume from a thrift store sheet and some old clothes out of my tickle trunk, and a belt that my now passed friend katie made. i felt surrounded and held by a lot of love this october and it was a very nostalgic experience for me.
i even bought some halloween nailpolish just for fun.
being with him, as well, made me so happy, even though it was just this brief time. i had the idea that we should dress as classic figures from greek mythology – persephone and hades, two unlikely characters who found such love and understanding in each other, not so different from ourselves.
one of my friends told me that being loved is being seen fully and completely, and i must agree here.
to be seen for who you are, who you truly are, and also, who you are not, and then accepted despite it all, is such an intimate kind of knowledge. there is such vulnerability there and such a place to be held in safety.
in some ways, i’ve always looked forward to the safety of october, the end of the scorching desert city heat, the safety to be held by a season, to be seen by a moment in time, cloaked perfectly in shitty wet ‘n’ wild black lipstick and nailpolish, the ability to fall in love over carved pumpkins and in corn mazes.
over the past few years, i’ve felt only sadness during october, during spooky time, my favourite time. and this year, 2025, i have felt so very happy. i have felt so very safe. i have felt so loved. i have felt so grateful.
in the tarot, the death card represents change. october has been no different with it’s dead leaves.
i hope you all have or had a happy halloween.
hospital vespers 