Summer Blues

Day after day, week after week: the same thing. Relentlessly hot days; so hot you'd have to wake up at 7 am to accomplish anything before the sun rises too high. Once the sun has settled into its spot at the top of the sky, it shines its brutal light down upon us until damn near 9 o'clock at night. What do we do on days like these? What is there to do besides swim, or hide out in a cool dark house and read the day away? We drink. This town has turned me into a drinker, goddamnit, and I don't even really enjoy being drunk. It's such an easy routine; an escape, I suppose: rise, eat, work, drink, sleep. Repeat. I am not one for monotony, in fact it drives me crazy, but as the summer wears on and temperatures soar ever higher, I feel numb to it. My body may be here, but my mind is not. In my head I'm living a completely different life in a place so far away. I have been selfish and sad and unfeeling and I'm afraid that I won't be able to change it.

I've been worrying a lot lately. I feel the winds of change picking up all around me, rustling through the leaves of the trees, rattling the dead dry stalks of the vines outside, the tendrils that withered and hardened as they were making their way up the fence. I desperately need to leave, though I just got back. Panic is setting in and there is no way out - at least not yet. I am trying to teach myself patience, but I feel restless and whiny like a child, and the idea of "next summer" seems a thousand miles away. I dread what will happen to me if I stay. The logical part of me knows that this town is not actively doing anything to me - that I am responsible for my own actions, my own choices, my own happiness - but still another part of me sees the city as an enormous, dark, malicious creature, mouth full of teeth grinning like a lunatic, mocking me. Tripping me up, trying to make me fail; tempting me, pickpocketing me, leading me blindfolded down unfamiliar roads. I know I am not the only person who feels this way, based on what I have heard from those around me. I'm tempted to say that this is a fairly common feeling for those who live in big cities. I can't imagine living in one any larger than where I am currently. 700,000 people and growing. This city is becoming so snug I feel like I could wear it as a hat.

I feel that I have not been fully present since I got back into town. After a beautiful, blissful two weeks on the road, travelling through some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen, upon returning home I chose instead to retreat back into those memories and ignore the swirl of strange things happening before me. I realize now that I am not truly happy here, and while I think it's healthy to have such a realization, the sharp truth of it touches me with an awful sadness. It's so difficult to connect all the dots throughout the years of your life. How could you have any idea how things will turn out on the other side? You're 19, you're in love, you're stuck in a suburban hellhole, and you make a decision. You pack up all your shit and fly a thousand miles across the country. You're hell-bent on something but you're not really sure what it is. It's so funny to me to look back on these moments, these events. I often feel like I'm three different people, representing my past, present, and future. My past self made a decision for her future self; she set the wheels in motion and let momentum take over. My past and present self are ever trying to please my future self. At what point does the future become the present? When can I stop building little empires for myself and be content to exist within them instead? The choices I have made thus far have brought me here, both physically and mentally, and for that I am grateful. But I am not doing what I set out to do, and I do not think that I could, at least not here and now. I am trying not to see an exit strategy as an escape. I am trying not to run away. I keep telling myself that I will not be able to focus or accomplish anything unless a change of scenery is in order. It is for my own good. I have done it before and I can surely do it again.

In my dreams I'm walking again through cool, thick forests, stands of ancient redwoods towering 300 feet in the air. I'm digging my toes into the black sand of a Northern California beach, delicate flowers and vines creeping their way across the driftwood strewn all along the shore. It's July, and I'm shivering in the three layers I'm dressed in. The highway at my back is long, seemingly endless, and threads its way through the gentle curves of the mountains and forests, along the coast, and back again, all the way up into Oregon. The mist is billowing off of the mountains, spilling down the slopes and settling low to the ground, where the wind spreads it so thin and wispy that it looks like steam is coming off of the land itself. I'm eating hot, thick clam chowder in a restaurant that looks like a cabin. I can hear the ocean from the table. My boots are wet from the humidity in the air and the dew in the grass I've been walking through all day. I'm standing on a huge cliff overlooking Thunder Rock, which sits silently in the Pacific Ocean, nestled among the cold, cold waves. This cliff is choked with foliage, a veritable rainforest of enormous trees, ferns, vines and moss. The wind is roaring in my ears, threatening to sweep me off of the rock if I'm not careful. Every step I take the view becomes more heart-breakingly beautiful, and I want to weep; I cannot find words nor thoughts to express myself. There is an aching silence inside me that is both peaceful and sinister at once. I feel like I am home, in an ancient, primordial, instinctual way. The blood runs through my veins as the rivers flow towards the sea. I imagine that I am the first person to ever gaze on this shoreline, and it is easy to do all alone up there, with no sign of civilization for miles around. Never again do I want anything less than these things for myself. I have bathed in the light of the cold northern sun, and every fibre of my being longs to be back again.