It is very strange how a change in your life can affect your perception of the world. Objects and ideas that only a month or two ago were freighted with infinite meaning can suddenly seem fragile and empty and purposeless.

New trees of thought will grow up to replace them, stronger and more gnarled and stubborn than before, but the pillars of your heaven have been shaken. It seems as though at any minute the sky will fall, or perhaps the curtain, and the play will be over and it will be time to go home. The things that changed around you will be revealed to have been only props and scenery, and the friends who put on new faces or disappeared will be waiting for you laughing in the hallway behind the stage, incredulous that you believed they would be so easily changed or lost. The months you spent struggling with the changes in your life have in reality only been minutes—it was all a dream, in fact, play and all, and you are waking up to a robin’s hoarse plaint and the sun sneaking in with a breeze through your bedroom window…

But that isn’t going to happen.

The world has changed, and sooner or later you find that you’ve changed with it. The pangs of loss and disbelief become less and less frequent, the feeling that the camera crew is going to leap out from behind a building or a bush comes less and less often, and eventually you find yourself walking along in a new town with new friends that you made without realising it while you were busy feeling as though you would never make a new friend again. A crisp autumn breeze is blowing, and your new jeans and shoes match the excitement you’ve begun to feel about the pretty young woman with the pencil behind her ear and the well-read hardback in her hand, or the handsome twenty-something with his backpack carelessly slung over one shoulder.

Sooner or later you realise that life goes on, whether you want to go with it or not.

Seasons change.