we'll dream of a longer summer, but this is the one we have: i lay my sunburnt hand on your table: this is the time we have. — adrienne rich
summer has arrived with its soft swelter, wide dark eyes, and familiar gentle breezes. she’s knocked on the door, decked out in a long light dress (or shorts and a sparkling crop top, depending on your persuasion). she carries with her sea salt and public pool blues, open shimmering sunsets, and the sense of calm that comes when you wake up in the morning only to realize you have nowhere to be. listless freedom, like dangling a cigarette between your index and middle fingers on your porch while the smoke drifts away. the heat may be stifling, boredom may consume, but at least we have the brazen sun and the endless array of time.
yesterday i went to my first pride march. it wasn’t the general one, but my city’s smaller lesbian march. it was an uplifting, joyous event, but in recollection i can only see a blank-faced woman on the sidelines, her group held back by police you. god loves you, her sign read. repent. there, with sweat trickling between my shoulder blades and mascara smudging around my eyes, feeling a bit like an interloper in my silence, i stumbled. there was nothing new about her phrase, but the juxtaposition between this and the crowd of lgbt people (young, old, brandishing signs that advocated for abortion rights or racial equality or palestine) felt painful. i don’t know why it struck me so much. it wasn’t anything i hadn’t heard before. but then a twenty-something woman with cropped hair came to stand in front of her, brandishing a new sign: i love being a dyke. the sidewalk gave the christian woman height, but the other woman had determination. had a look in her eyes like maybe she was my age once, and had seen a sign like that at her first march, and had felt the same cold glimpse of shame. i don’t know. i’m projecting, maybe.
what summer feels less than episodic until it’s over? when you’re living through a summer, every day feels individual, tucked in on itself. consequences are a headache, a necessary apology text, a broken piece of jewelry. the actions you take one day don’t translate to the next. summer is hot and warm and sweet. summer is bright and vivid and cheerful. summer is purgatory, a strange place for high school students clawing time out until the next year arrives. summer is god loves you, repent and i love being a dyke. summer, i’m telling you, is a place where we begin to live.
here i am, again, in a purgatory that doesn’t seem to mean much of anything. for months i’ve been saying i’ll make a list of books and movies to get through: done. for months i’ve been saying i wanted to get more than seven hours of sleep per night: done. for months i’ve been waiting for time: here it is, what’s to be done with it? next summer i am an adult, and everything changes, and all this summer is is biding time before that happens. i keep circling back to this topic, perhaps because it’s been weighing on me. i have romanticized being an adult for quite a while and now it’s coming, and now, against all odds, i am afraid. me, the petite neurotic cinephile who won’t deviate from the same route home unless absolutely necessary, left to my own devices. when we were packing for europe this morning, my mother vetoed several of my clothing combinations. how am i supposed to make it in the world?
i’m not the kind of person who can set their worries aside. one of my diary entries refers to my having an english project half-completed fourteen days before the due date as ‘behind.’ last night, lying awake at two in the morning, i frantically checked my swimming class schedule and emailed my school’s guidance counsellor because i couldn’t contemplate waiting for the morning without knowing what was going on. which is all to say that i know i have time before i have to worry about this, but that has never stopped me before. my father often claims i just worry because i’m bored. whether it was a fear of death, nuclear holocaust, or flunking out of school, he’d claim i wasn’t working hard enough. the words ‘mental illness’ mean very little to my parents, who are serbian immigrants. the words ‘lesbian who didn’t realize properly until she dated a man for four months’ might mean even less.
here’s to summer, in the end. here’s to an entry that feels as discombobulated as aimless as this season always presents itself as being. here’s to flying off to europe after three years away, rippling cheers at pride marches, impending university applications, and creeping down the hall after watching double indemnity at midnight. this season, haphazard as it may seem, has arrived. let’s begin to live.