🍂 Autumn Glow, Safe Love & The Muse That Changed My Life ✨

 🍂 Autumn Glow, Safe Love & The Muse That Changed My Life ✨ Isn’t it wild how autumn feels like both a funeral and a rebirth? One minute the leaves are dying in orange fire, and the next, you’re walking under them like the world just handed you a blank page and dared you to write your own ending. That’s exactly how this season hit me, and it’s why I’m sitting here talking about fall, nostalgia, and the one person who cracked open my entire world: Nia.

Autumn has always been a loaded word for me. For some, it’s pumpkin spice, sweaters, and moody playlists, but for me, it’s the sharp ache of nostalgia mixed with the stubborn spark of survival. The season paints the trees in blazing orange and crimson, but behind that beauty is something brutal. Leaves fall because they’re dying. Branches bare themselves because they’re shedding. And yet, instead of mourning, I find comfort in this cycle. Fall whispers, “let go.” It doesn’t beg. It doesn’t plead. It just shows you that killing the old makes space for the new.

I learned this most clearly during my long solo walks. I’m an art and film student, so my brain doesn’t exactly have an off switch. Walking around campus or even grabbing groceries from the corner store becomes an accidental meditation. My head fills with scenes for films I’ll probably never shoot, poems that demand to be scribbled on receipts, and dialogue that spills into my notebooks like someone else is dictating it. That’s what autumn does to me. The crisp air bites, the trees glow, and suddenly, every memory feels like a movie reel that refuses to stop playing.

And then, out of nowhere, the past collides with the present. Because it’s not just about me wandering through a cinematic autumn landscape. It’s about who walks beside me now. Her name is Nia. And honestly, she turned fall into something I no longer face alone.

Here’s the truth: I used to be blind. Blind to who actually cared and who just wanted to lurk in the shadows of my failures. Blind to how much I was worth outside of what I could produce, prove, or perform. My life before her was crowded with the wrong people. People who only popped up to gossip, to monitor if I had fallen, to poke at the softest wounds with malicious curiosity. I let myself chase those connections, thinking maybe if I just held on harder, someone would finally hold back. But autumn taught me something: some trees have to shed their entire canopy before they can bloom again.

Nia is the opposite of that toxic crowd. She doesn’t question why I identify as asexual. She doesn’t keep a scoreboard of my achievements. She doesn’t hover with secret animosity. She just loves, and she makes it look effortless. You know that one person who feels like home? That’s her. Since the day she stepped into my life, inspiration has turned into a flood. My film scripts? Fueled by her. My poems, my prose, my late-night book drafts? All traced back to her energy. Nia is my muse, and I don’t say that lightly.

What blows my mind is how private we keep things. That wasn’t a stylistic choice but a survival instinct. I’ve dealt with stalking and harassment before, so privacy isn’t about being coy, it’s about being safe. But within that privacy, happiness blooms. We’re together on campus every day. We explore small corners of the city, sip coffee at places no one Instagrams, and remind each other what “living” actually means. Healing doesn’t happen in isolation; sometimes, it takes one person showing up consistently to make you realize you’re not as helpless as you feared.

And she proved that in the darkest chapter of my life. I went through major surgery for respiratory problems, and there’s a special kind of loneliness that comes with waking up in a hospital bed wondering if anyone will call. Nia called. That simple act lit up a part of me I thought had gone dark forever. She reminded me that I wasn’t as invisible as I convinced myself to be. While I wasted years chasing people who couldn’t care less, the one person who genuinely wanted me to heal was already in my orbit.

It’s funny how love redefines safety. For the longest time, I thought safety meant locking the door, checking the windows, keeping my gun nearby just in case. But safety has another shape: it’s the knowledge that if someone knocks on the door, I’m not alone. There’s someone who looks out for me, who makes the world less sharp-edged and more survivable. Autumn reflects that back at me. The season strips everything down, shows you what’s real, and then quietly promises: growth is coming.

But let’s not romanticize it too much. Autumn is messy. Leaves rot, winds bite, the days shorten, and the cold creeps in like an unwelcome guest. Yet within that decay is transformation. I like to think I mirror that. The old furniture of my life, the dirty remnants of past connections, I’ve started to dispatch them. Not out of cruelty, but out of necessity. There’s something satisfying about cleaning space for what actually matters. It’s not sad; it’s survival. And if fall has taught me anything, it’s that survival is the first step to joy.

Everywhere I turn this season, I see metaphors. The orange glow of the trees reminds me that endings can be gorgeous. The crisp silence of campus walks reminds me that solitude isn’t emptiness, it’s a breeding ground for imagination. And the steady presence of Nia reminds me that love doesn’t have to be dramatic or demanding; sometimes it’s just safe, steady, and shockingly simple.

That’s the thing about autumn. It lingers. It makes you reflect, but it also demands that you move forward. It doesn’t care if you’re ready. It tells you, bluntly: let go. I used to think letting go meant losing. Now I understand it means making room. And in that room, I’ve found scripts, poems, laughter, recovery, and most importantly, a love that doesn’t ask me to be anyone but myself.

So when I walk alone this season, ideas rushing and memories colliding, I don’t feel like I’m chasing ghosts anymore. I feel like I’m walking toward something. Something orange-glow, something safe, something endlessly inspiring. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what autumn really is: not the death of what was, but the rehearsal for what’s next.

So yeah, maybe autumn is about letting go, but for me, it’s also about looking forward with eagle vision. The leaves fall, the cold sets in, but somewhere in that silence, a new script is waiting, a new poem is forming, and a whole new world is about to begin. The only question left is: are you ready to shed, too?