Are we over summer?
Most of the turning points in my life have happened under the glare of the sun. It’s a season we associate with length, pause and intensity. Moments from summers over the years are strung together and played back in memories, hazy and grainy, the wash of nostalgia, all the good bits squished into one long concertina that stretches and spreads in season and becomes impossibly small once the days get shorter.
Eating cold, ripe nectarines over the sink. 6am swims and 10pm pints. Freckle-flecked cheeks and golden skin. Hot, heavy, balmy nights illuminated by stars and big moons. Endless barbecues and ice-cold beers and thin little straps on brown shoulders and reading a whole book in a day. Yes, we all dream of summer.
And the cultification of summer has been prolific. Hot girl summer turned into feral girl summer, which morphed into rat girl summer. Each year, holiday destinations became rote (2023: the summer of Marseille). But lately there seems to be a collective shift towards leaving summer behind that feels deeper than just the eagerness to move onto a new season.
My TikTok algorithm is awash with deep crimsons and the ethereal echoes of Bon Iver’s Roslyn. I’ve heard the refrain, “I… am an autumn” in Richard Gilmore’s familiar booming tones too many times to count and I virtually visit Stars Hollow at least three times a day. Soup season, brothy beans season, pumpkin season. Trader Joes releasing its fall-themed snacks as soon as September hits. Of course, we are all fickle creatures bending to the will of time; summer content is over, autumn content is in. Is it that we’re tired of the expectations that summer brings? (I’ve spoken to friends who feel guilty for not being outside when it’s sunny – the side effect of living in a country that only sees sun three months a year). Is it the all-too-visible effects of climate change? Is it the observance of women’s bodies as layers are taken off? Is it the aftermath of post-pandemic languishing that caused us to do too much because we simply could?
Anyone who knows me will attest to my near-toxic obsession with the sun. When it emerges, I’m in it, whether it’s sat by the window in my flat or at the Ladies’ Ponds with a picnic and a book. The chokehold the sun has had on me for the past 32 years of my life has been suffocating. For most of my adult life, I have chased the endless summer: the intensity, the romance, the forever young, press pause on responsibilities of it all. It’s been a balance of vanity and identity (I look and feel better / I look and feel myself), but on reflection perhaps something to do with avoidance. In the frisson of summer – when we feel the freedom to vacate our normal routines, to escape and unfurl – the heat affords us refuge from our swirling thoughts.
This year felt slightly different. A balmy June, a cool July, an inconsistent August and suddenly a two week heatwave just went we all felt ready to retreat back into ourselves. Perhaps it was seeing a picture of myself in a swimsuit, perhaps it was the stream of sweat that never left my face, perhaps it was the lack of A/C in London or perhaps it’s because I’m simply growing up, but I felt uncomfortable and entirely not myself.
‘Summer is for the young,’ keeps echoing in my ears even though I know it’s not true, although it feels poignant in a way for me. Perhaps my affinity with autumn – with retreating, reflecting, acquiring layers, self-protecting – is eerily coinciding with a new season in my life. In the past I craved summer because I craved releasing responsibility. I did it this summer: I took my foot off the pedal with work and instead allowed my social life to rule everything instead.
I was uncharacteristically social. I was out every night, rarely cooked, never planned time for myself. I was thriving on a packed calendar, on the surface proud of how active I was being, but internally feeling the pressure of showing up. Eventually I cracked, sat on the sofa in my friend Becca’s house, a rare moment of quiet, her son Ari away for the night, candles lit, tarot cards spread out in front of us. With a plethora of plans ahead of me when I returned from Cornwall to London, I started to panic. It sounds pathetic (perhaps it is) but I felt myself worrying to a debilitating degree about constantly disappointing people, about having to perform the same act over and over again, repeating tired old stories night after night, worried that I’m boring people or that by keeping quiet I appeared withdrawn and uninterested.
Summer is for the young and I’m still young but I’m getting older and that is confronting. I used to be someone who leaves but now I am someone who stays, but I long to feel the freedom to leave without feeling like I’m leaving something behind. I am a woman in her 30s, a single woman, a woman who has progressed and stalled, who has felt success but who sometimes feels like a failure. Someone who doesn’t want to admit that the social expectations are secretly what I want, because I’ve spent the past ten years pushing against them. Someone who has saved experiences but not money, and someone who feels like she’s perhaps achieved her quota of adventure too early, and now must do the responsible thing and fall in line.
Yesterday was the last full day of summer and I spent it reading in the sun and returning home and eating pizza with my brother and jumping on the trampoline with my niece. I drove back after sun set and could see the clouds rolling in as I crossed the threshold from summer and autumn. This morning there is a nip in the air and I wrote about getting my life in gear. I am getting older and while the grip of summer is still strong, still something I will dream of and look forward to in the dead of winter, I think I’m ready to settle into the autumn of my life. All of the expectations are yet to be ironed out in therapy, but I am glad for a few months of space.
