Autumnal

Not only a good word to describe the scene outside my window - damp. grey weather, half-naked trees, dull, flat light - but, perhaps, my frame of mind, and even the overall life stage I'm in, too. After all, even if I make the age that currently constitutes average male life expectancy in the UK - 77.2 according to Wikipedia - I'm over two-thirds of the way there. And, over the past few years, my health could be said to have begun to parallel the changes Autumn brings. Maybe it's an overstatement to say I'm slowly dying, but the sap doesn't flow as strongly as it did, taking me from someone who, apart from a couple of bouts of flu and other minor odds and ends, had hardly been ill in my adult life, to someone who's on regular heart medication and hasn't felt 100% well for almost five years. I'm not claiming to be some kind of bedridden invalid, obviously, but that 10% or 15% of missing vigour is very noticeable.
There have been other changes, too, most notably my increasing reluctance to carry on pretending to be something I'm not. Over the past weekend, I wasn't especially close to 'coming out' to my wife, but I did spend some time playing the relevant scenarios in my head, and this, maybe for the first time, not in response to our having had some kind of argument, but coolly, dispassionately, almost. It might still never happen, but the fact that I can envisage it coming about in a calm, controlled, 'academic' way, rather than in the 'heat of battle' perhaps suggests that I might be a step or two closer to casting aside the mask that I find so frustrating. I do still love my wife, and care about not hurting her, but what will hurt more? The truth, or ever more years of deception? Only a rhetorical question, really, even I don't know the answer, because if I did, I'd act on the insight.
Despite all this talk of Autumn, I'm not all that downbeat, except about the money situation, which still seems to be an intractable problem at the moment. At least it's payday for me tomorrow, keeping the financial wolves from the door for another week or two, but this hand to mouth kind of lifestyle really isn't in any way congenial. Complaining won't change anything, though, so it's more overtime for me tomorrow and Saturday, two more 12 hour shifts to look forward to. If that's not an oxymoron.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B