these late summers 08/07/2026

I always get a strange feeling around this time of year. Maybe it is because I was conditioned from school. Knowing I would have to return soon, that the summer stagnation would soon end, and that new experiences will begin.

I’m unsure how to describe the feeling. I tend to listen to music that makes me cry around this time. It’s not just that I seek out sad music, but also the fact that music just has that effect on me during these times. I don’t know, these weeks I’ve felt a constant sense that I am on the brink of tears. It'll hit me at work, or while I'm driving. I am struck with some incomprehensible longing for an emotion I know is crafting its affects inside me yet I am entirely unable to make any sense of. It feels a bit cathartic, as though I’m mourning. But I just have no idea exactly what it is that I am mourning.

It is probably that a backlog of grief has accumulated within me. Something about the late summer unclogs it. Each day feels so painfully drawn out, and the evenings go on and on. I prefer winter, when I have every reason to be cooped up in my room, the nights come early and I feel more calmly alert. There is just so much to grieve. Seemingly more than I can take all at once. There's always something to greive. The greif never seems to end.

I feel like I am getting better at acceptance. It is often very easy to imagine a sort of different life for yourself. I always thought that maybe it was a motivation problem, or that I lacked self discipline. But nowadays I realize that it was a kind of clinging to my own narratives that has been part of the issue. A new life brings about a kind of emptiness that only time and experience can fill. But in some ways it seems to alienate you from your past. Am I who I’ve been? Or am I who I am to become? I guess there is a moment in-between where you must be nothing.

I walk around town and I see history play out in front of me. A walk I went on three years ago, where I came to a stunning conclusion. A park some friends and I visited. A trail that brings about the time I first discovered it. And it all plays out so vividly in front of me. It’s actually rather haunting. There is too much continuity. I am here, and all of those things happened “over there.” Sometimes it’s hard to believe that I am still here. The past is so much easier to make sense of than the present is. How could I possibly explain what is going on inside of me?

I don’t know. But I have accepted that time passes. A basic fact of reality, by the way. I think I have always had a hard time letting things go. I feel a compulsion to reiterate my past to myself, lest I forget who I am. But maybe it is for the best that we are allowed to forget. Maybe it is better that I allow myself to be empty, and reserve that space for new parts of me to accumulate and expand. A bittersweet emptiness. As though I am moving to a new city and have to say goodbye to my friends, except I'm saying goodbye to the past that I cling to. "On to new things!" I say to myself with a few tears to spare. This time I think I would like to be a bit more forgiving and I would like to be. I think maybe I can let myself be? Please let me be, me.

music:

In the Morning of the Magicians - The Flaming Lips

Katy Song - Red House Painters (thank u johhnyboy for the rec)