late summer scaries
I went to the park and sat in the garden today. It's beautiful here on the New England coast. As I sat, the sun kissed my cheeks and I could hear the rush of the river’s current from behind me, amongst bushels of flowers I couldn’t identify. It is still summer. It looks like summer and sounds like summer, but as it goes every year, the attitude shift of late August is among us. Summer dwindles along with the population as people move away, return to school, to their new homes, to chilly reality. They fly off, one by one, leaving you with a string of never-ending, half-assed goodbyes. Until next year. Fall break. The holidays. Later. ASAP.
I’ll be leaving soon too and can feel the forecast moving through my body. I’m anxious and antsy as though Father Time is scratching his nails across my door. The prospect of a tan I was never going to get evaporates from the stream of summer possibilities. I’m irritated by everything, especially my family, and for no good reason (other than their loud chewing or in the event they can’t hear what I’m saying so I need to repeat myself several times and suddenly I’m yelling and they’re mad at me for yelling even though I just want them to hear me). My flesh is ill-fitting and every joke I make is laced with pessimism. I can’t rest but I have nothing left to do. The vibes are off. I feel terribly weird. It’s these moments of in-between that stir something wild in me. So much of life is transition and most of it is so, so irritating to me.
The truth is, I’m scared to go back to college. The hardest must be behind me, but what if lies just ahead? I have more people I dread running into than friends I get to reunite with. I have to go back to the past two years of my life—the roughest and toughest years of my life—and revisit the girl who was blinded by the love she had for her first boyfriend. The girl who was too distracted by her splintery mental health to be a good roommate. The girl who was rejected. The girl who shut herself off from people because she had been burned too many times. She went through so much. I just want to protect her, without having to see her again. Or the people who knew her.
But alas, September waits for no woman. Summer will fade into autumn and things will turn out fine. It’s just late August that makes me stew in a summer simmer pot, all riled up, overdramatic, and slightly clinical.
On my way to my summer job, I pass a cow pasture right off the highway. I think to myself, I wish I could be a cow in that field, grazing all day. Even if I’m gone, at least someone will be fed.
