Welcome to the last day of July, the edge of summer where the months change and reality sets in. August. I say that I hate August, and I do, but it isn’t really August’s fault that it happens to host the beginning of endings. I’ve been thinking about life lately and how much my life has changed even just over this past year. People preach that high school is one of the best times of your life, so if that is the truth, the best time of my life is sadly over. I beg to differ. Ever since I donned that red cap and gown and walked across that stage in front of my five hundred classmates and their respected families with uncontrollable anticipation, my life has been any thing but bland.
Summer. Let me linger a little bit on this noun. Summer is quite a character. You long for her warm nights and endless opportunities ever since the crisp breeze of Autumn touches your shoulder. When she finally arrives you are in shock. Her heat wave intoxicates you and the bright sun blinds your eyes and diminishes your worries. Summer is a bitch. While she pampers you with sandy beaches, ice cream cones, fireworks, sleepovers, and barbeques, she is quickly and stealthily draining away time. She forcefully insults the weak hands of the clock and urges them to fast-forward the minutes that turn into hours, which turn into days and eventually into months. All this time you haven’t got a clue because you are in a mindless trance of pleasure and excitement that this warm season only seems to awaken in you.
Three months. June. July. August. At the brink of June it seems to be more like a lifetime, an eternity. College? Moving out of the house? Missing your friends? Leaving your boyfriend home for his senior year of high school while you are 400 miles away at your dream school? Hush. There is no need to worry about these things. You’ll worry about them come August. The Summer is young, live it up, laugh, stay up late, be happy.
Summer has left me and those three months have somehow turned into ten days. I am scrambling, my thoughts rapid, my tears never seeming to fully dry on my cheeks. This summer has been the most beautiful and frightening summer I may ever experience. I have found true friends that I’ve always had all along that I failed to notice until these months of freedom. I have stayed up late while deep emotions engulfed me like the blankets on my bed. I have sung at the top of my lungs with my windows down while driving to countless graduation parties, feeling the exhilaration of the warm air through my hair and the patterns that the sun etched on my skin. I have eaten too much and yet not enough for I long for another ice cream cone or strawberry banana smoothie. I have held hands with my sisters, even though we do not have the same mother or father, and jumped into vast waters of the turquoise pool that we call our own secret paradise. I have fallen in love with my best friend, even though he has been right by my side this entire year and made my senior prom the best prom I could ever ask for. I have stopped letting my head muffle the cries of my heart when it comes to taking risks, especially when that risk pertains to letting the walls I have built up come crumbling down to finally let the most genuine and sweet boy I know capture my heart. I have laughed in the pouring rain as the skies soaked us without a care. I have watched the stars make their journey through the sky as they race on to another day. I have had kisses that have left me speechless and my mind in a fog of pleasure and pure happiness while the orange lights of he streetlamps silhouetted our entwined bodies in the middle of an empty street. I have cried myself to sleep realizing that no matter how hard I might try to grasp onto these days, that they will eventually leave me as soon as the sun chases the moon out of the sky. This summer I have finally LIVED.
And so this time of carelessness and freedom seems to have slipped out of my fingers like the sand on the beach that finds its way into your shoes and follows you into your house. Time has been lost, just like how sand is captured by the foamy waves of the ocean, but rather time has be taken away by the ever-moving hands of the clock.
All I can do now is breathe in the air, feel it inflate my lungs and open my eyes each of these last ten days to how much I’ve accomplished, how much I still want to do, and how much I will truly miss. Summer, you frustrate me beyond belief, but at the same time I wouldn’t want you to ever change. You are an illusion, a cynical, calculating illusion that makes my head spin and eyes tear up. But you are also that window that you open on the first warm day of Spring when the once white snow is black slush, when that warm, earthy breeze, so uncharacteristic of the dull, cold world before you, overflows your house with the feeling of the future, that better, sunnier days are ahead. That feeling of the future has infected me and I must succumb to this fever that reality only induces.
The changes are so close that I can taste its bitterness on my tongue. So, farewell Summer, I will find you again in another 365 days and I’m sure that you will once again fool me with your sense of endlessness. But until then, I will continue to use this awareness you have gifted to me to enter into dreadful August and not let the glory of Summer hold me back. Today is the last day of July, but tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life.
