When people speak of the worst month, the answers scatter in every direction, shaped by whatever each person happens to be carrying that year.
But when September comes up, the scattering seems to stop. Almost everyone, it seems, can agree on this one.
Perhaps it is because September marks the end of summer's permission to do nothing. It is the Monday of months, the point where routine reclaims what freedom had briefly loosened, school resuming, work resuming, the ordinary weight of days returning to your shoulders.
For those who feel the seasons more than others, September is also the quiet announcement that fall is near. The days shorten. The nights stretch longer than they should. There is a chill that was not there before, and with it, a certain heaviness that is hard to name.
September means a year is nearly spent. There is something a little sorrowful in that, watching months fall away like leaves that have not yet decided to turn.
But it also means a new year is close enough to reach for, and grief and anticipation have always been able to sit in the same room together.
Still, I think the truest answer, the one beneath all the others, is simpler than any of this. I was born in September. And so whatever this month is to the world, to me it has always been something closer, something I cannot speak of as a stranger might.
Maybe that is what September is, in the end. Not a season so much as a mirror, showing back whatever we already carry, so that what we call the worst month is only ever the month we know best.