Summer

A New England summer is as unpredictable as my life is not.

One day, it's ninety-eight degrees, and the sun beats down on you so hard that you think God has turned up the pressure of gravity just to watch you squirm. The next day, it's barely seventy and pouring rain.

But the unpredictability of my summer stopped there. Every day was the same. They all blended together, daylight hanging on for dear life, showing up sometime around five in the morning, and finally letting go sometime around eight thirty. The nights were short, warm and breezy.

And it came to the point where I forgot what the world was like beyond the edges of my vast property. I became so accustomed to being miserable and bored that I forgot what it was like to feel otherwise. The simplest things slipped my mind, things I used to know how to do. How to be social. How to put on a disguise of false kindness. How to make an attempt to look and act presentable for the sake of having a social life.

My previous life froze in its tracks, and even the most sweltering of those summer days couldn't melt it back into place. My new life was repetition. Obediently watering flowers that weren't even mine for no reward. Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and TV dinners. Waking up after eleven and going to bed at two in the morning. Going to grocery store with my mom, which was something that changed my day from boring to eventful. Watching movie after movie on my living room floor. Going for the same walk on the same trail every day. Listening to Nirvana and The All-American Rejects on my Nana's porch swing until dark. Flipping through old Seventeen magazines. Playing the same old songs over and over on my guitar, "Kristy, Are You Doing OK?" becoming a daily routine. Dieting. Reading. Going for the occasional swim at my grandmother's house. Surfing the Internet at the same time every night, marveling at how dull my life was compared to the lives of the smiling faces on my Facebook News Feed. Thinking so much that I put myself into a bad mood.

I missed the things I had to replace with memories.

But my "summer life" wasn't all bad. Nowadays, I'd do anything to get that simple existence back. It was complete paradise compared to putting up with the rest of the world, and all of its superficial, idiotic occupants.

But that last statement makes me feel a little troubled, even when I write it, because I hate hypocrites.