October (UPG warning)

This past week has been one of significant changes in my life, in fact, in some ways the entire month of October is promising to be one long...I dunno... rite of passage?

The most striking thing to me so far is that this month of changes is going to be framed by blood at both the beginning and end. Last Tuesday (the second day of the month) I started my tattoo of dedication to Frija. Again, not really sure what else to call this tattoo, or how to explain just what it means to me. Language can be so clumsy, and wordhoards so unyielding, that I guess 'dedication' will have to do. I spent four hours in the chair, getting a tattoo that's big enough to be a half sleeve and need to go back to complete it on the final day of October.

The day after the tattoo was begun, I left my job, and my husband and I began the process of moving up north to a different town.

I couldn't be happier to get out of the place we were in. Quite frankly, it was *unhael*, the land itself felt angry, and it affected the people there. I have never lived around so many stomach complaints, or in so small a place with so many funeral parlours per head of population. For my own part, I had problems breathing, no energy and just felt depressed a lot. One day when sitting at the bus stop, this lady that was having a mental crisis came and sat next to me. She told me about how she'd lost her baby, how the father of the baby had left her, how she'd shoplifted some baby clothes that morning, how she wished her ex would talk to her and then she began ranting about how the village where we were was held together with pain and suffering. As logically unsound as all of that is, I really can't disagree with her.

The house we've moved to and the town we now live in is the polar opposite, not only does it feel *hael*, but strangely familiar in a way. I can feel something in the air here that is so familiar and exciting to me and that makes me happy. I can breathe better here, have more energy and feel more positive. Our animals are *much* happier and not just because of the garden.

Weirdly, all of our furniture and decor seems to match this house perfectly too, even though it was mostly bought on another continent. This place, even though we moved in two days ago, is already more home than the previous place was after a year. What's more, this place has wights, active ones that both my 'I'll ignore anything weird at all costs' husband and I have seen. One looks like a cat and the other is a previous resident that inhabits the workbench area of the basement. At first, he can be a little intimidating, but doesn't mean to scare people or animals. When I first went down there, I felt scared, but after muttering under my breath about creepy American basements and horror movies, the atmosphere changed, warmed up and now it's fine. When the cats arrived and we put them in the basement while we moved in, they hid under the workbench in the and had to be dragged out because they were so scared of being down there. I had a bit of a word, asked him to be nice to them and now they go down without any problems.

And as weird as this all sounds, as someone that grew up in a home in which things most definitely go bump in the night, this is far more homey and welcoming to me than a place with nothing there. Like the old place, or the soulless military housing before that.

So October is a time of changes, but I can't help but get the feeling that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.