Jill Pertler

It’s been a rough few days, or maybe a week – give or take. You know how those things go.

People looking on from the outside wouldn’t necessarily see or know that I’m having a bit of a rough patch. You know how those things (also) go. We hide our rough patches because they aren’t becoming, or at least that’s what we believe.

Even when we are struggling – and who amongst us doesn’t struggle sometimes? Even when we are struggling, we look completely and utterly normal to most others. Sometimes we even look completely and utterly normal in the mirror.

We hide it that well.

You could say November is a sorrowful month for me. It’s a month of difficult memories and the anniversary of the end. Top that with the looming holiday season and you’ve got a trifecta of an abyss, or at least something akin to a drinking straw with a small hole in it.

You know how that goes: you go to take a sip and something isn’t quite right. The straw doesn’t work like it’s supposed to work – like you are used to a straw working. You suck and the straw doesn’t – or maybe in truth, it’s the other way around. Either way, it just doesn’t feel right, because it isn’t.

That’s November for me. Like a straw with a hole in it.

You could say November is a difficult month for me; I could say it – but I don’t like to. It feels like an excuse not worth excusing. Logical me knows that a certain date or time doesn’t make a day or a week or a month more difficult than any other.

Or maybe it does. I’m not sure anymore. And that’s okay. Being sure when you are wrong is much worse than not being sure when you don’t know.

I find a small amount of comfort in the fact that I still have the ability to wax philosophical.

But back to November. And memories. I guess they are the haunting element to this all. Or at least one of the haunting elements. There are probably a few. Going through trauma leaves you haunted on multiple fronts.

Sometimes you cry yourself to sleep. Even two years later. And when you wake in the early hours, you see that it is morning, again. You try to look at the sunshine and view the new day for what it is – even though it may be the wrong day during the wrong month and you are fighting to be filled with gratitude instead of agony because, truly, that is what life should be about: appreciation and thankfulness.

Maybe just maybe.

But then you realize that no one’s life is perfect. Nothing is perfect. Maybe we all get a sucky straw from time to time. Maybe some of us drink from it every day, for a long, long time, hoping

at some point to not notice the hole anymore. Maybe, eventually, we toss the straw and drink right from the cup or even open the cupboard and pull out a new straw. Maybe we find a new way to do things – a new way to live and breathe.

November could be a difficult month for me.

Hell, it is a difficult month for me. For now. I’m still drinking from the straw; haven’t learned to give it up quite yet. But that doesn’t mean I won’t or I can’t. Not at all.

Not in the least little bit. We’ll see how it goes.

Jill Pertler is an award-winning syndicated columnist, published playwright, and author. Don’t miss a slice; follow the Slices of Life page on Facebook.