Summer is not my favorite season. First off, I'm a Texas girl with the heat tolerance of a penguin. I love being outside but I hate intense heat and humidity. For me, fall and spring are heavenly, mild temperatures yet sweater weather. Even winter is magnificent with it's magic of Christmas and possibility of snow. Summer is limbo--a transition time to test my self-efficacy. July is purgatory. Since I was in middle school, I never really had close friends living in my hometown. All my friends lived way out of town, sometimes out of state because I'd met them while I'd gone to summer camp and mission trips in Colorado with my youth group. Both of these annual events I attended religiously and they had always made my summers worthwhile as a teen. These memories are a huge chunk of me as a person.
I find it hard to bear as an adult to stay at home in the intense heat. I've always suffered from chronic FOMO (fear of missing out) syndrome due to growing up with strict parents. I'd watch all my classmates party hard in Cancun together over breaks or go to the lake and watch fireworks. I'd sit at home and read, dreaming of what could be and avoiding Facebook at all costs. I hate social media, because there is nothing worse than being so completely thankful for your life and struggling to keep this mindset when you see a group of people looking like they're having so much doing something you've always wanted to do without bothering to invite you. I know this must sound ridiculously self-centered, but I suppose as a teenager, you're kind of a narcissist. It's an occupational hazard which I long wore out like one might wear out a favorite pair of Birkenstocks. I gave summer the job of my time to build myself as a person-learning new things and working full time (I love my job), and writing hard core. Regardless of my endeavors to improve myself and learn, I am not exempt from depression. It's hard to admit but every summer has been drastic for me-every summer over the past few yearsI've had a bit of drama and then surgery.
Last summer I had a pretty nasty cancer scare—I developed a sketchy looking tumor on my neck. Two inches, the thing was purple and red. I didn't find out it was benign until six weeks after blood tests, a sonogram, and finally a CAT scan (I felt like a sushi roll being placed in an oven). I also had ended a bad relationship I stuck out for almost a year. I had surrendered and spent every ounce of spare time laying in bed in a last attempt to hide from everything hurtling in life. This wasn't the best choice I'd ever made but it was the best I could do—I had just broken up with a boy who made me feel like a bug too disgusting and not worth the effort to squish. By laying in bed all day, I could avoid squishing myself. Sometimes the most productive thing you do all day is breathe. Self-harm is never the answer for anything, it is just a question that has been unanswered for so long that it is written with an exclamation point instead of a question mark.
That summer was a healing process for me. I eventually got out of bed and went back to work. After work, I came home and worked some more. I wrote 20 pages and attended a yoga class with my mom. In a span of four weeks I managed to pick myself back up and haul my ass off to attend my sophomore year of college. I recovered in just a few weeks, but the nerve regeneration in my left shoulder just south of the scar on my neck will take up to two years to complete. I do not know if my summer investments of self-discovery will make me a better or less dull person, but I do what makes me happy.
