Something About a Summer

By the end of May, I had titled it an empty summer. Later, I would title it a summer of

dying things. There was a drought the whole month of June. No matter how much I watered the

neighbors plants while they were away at the wedding, I still lay awake at night, worried they

would blame me when they came home and saw their flowers wilting mournfully. I didn’t know

any of the dead. Not enough to care, that is. The first I heard of was on June 10th. I was

nannying at the time, wondering if I would ever be good enough to be more than a nanny when I

heard the news. He was just a classmate. We flirted once at a party. We’d talked until 4 am about

some brilliant scheme. We’d gone to see a play with friends and he wanted to sit next to me, but

he hadn’t. At the intermission my seatmate stood to get a drink, he sat down next to me and

argued about modern touches to Shakespeare until the lights dimmed again. I didn’t cry for him.

Not until August. I wanted to, desperately. I felt as if my sadness was the only way to show how

much I respected him; but I couldn’t get myself to cry. I felt awful about it for weeks. But then

again, I felt as if any mourning on my part would be superficial. Unjust, for who was I to mourn

a boy I barely knew?

Later in June, I found out that a boy from my highschool had killed himself. He was younger, I

couldn’t remember ever even talking to him. I cried for him. I sobbed and tore myself apart for

three weeks before I felt a little human again. That’s when the guilt set in. Who was I to mourn

this boy I’d never even known? I thought of his real friends, some of whom I did know, and

wondered if they would hate me if they knew how heartbroken I was. It's funny, I didn’t know

how selfish that was then. My grandmother's best friend died a few weeks later in mid-July. I’d

met her a few times when I was much younger.

That was when I started paying more attention to the news: more death. I focused on news about

war. There was plenty of it, though looking back, it would have been easy enough to avoid if I

tried. But I sought it out, I wanted to remember the name of every refugee I saw yelling through

the screen counting off how many relatives they’d lost; as if whoever could tally more would

deserve my aid more than the others. I often wished I could be there, standing in their shoes,

instead of lying on my bed at night staring at the ceiling, knowing I wouldn't want to wake up in

the morning.

I remember the advice of my therapist. She said that I should wear a hair tie around my wrist.

Then, when I had the urge to hurt myself, I could snap the rubber band against my skin instead.

Within a week, there was a raw welt of skin permanently open on my wrist.

All I could read that summer were books without endings. The Hunger Games, 1984, Brave New

World, The Bell Jar. The only thread I could find that summer was the strange indeterminacy of

life. The beginning of endings. I wondered if it was some kind of strange foreboding sign. I

became nervous to go back to school in the fall, what if this was when I found out that I am

exactly who I think myself to be?

I desperately wanted to fall in love that summer. Of course, I didn’t go out enough to talk to

anyone who might fall in love with me. But it didn’t matter so much to me if they fell for me.

That wasn’t the important part. What mattered was that I could love them. In all that death, I

needed to be deeply, passionately, obsessively in love. Maybe then, I would have a place to put

all the sorrow.