Summer.  To you, it’s days of endless sunshine, watermelon, and popsicles.  Instagram photoshoots with your best friends and staying out until midnight because your parents trust you and keep no curfew.  It’s a break from the stresses of your life, where you can go to the beach in a bikini knowing cute boys are trying to catch your attention, and vacation in Europe without so much as thinking about how much a scoop of gelato costs.  I know summer is your favorite season, and I get it. It’s carefree and fun, and there’s nothing to do except for everything you want. It doesn’t matter that the sun is trying to kill you, because to you, it’s just saying that you should go out and tan some more.

It’s okay that you love summer.  But please try to understand that what’s a brilliant yellow to you is only an endless gray for me.  To me, summer is nothing. Not horrible, not wonderful, but nothing. Summer is when I have to stay home all day, and no one is forced to be friends with me.  Summer is when I get to stay at home all day, so the scorching sun doesn’t darken my skin, and I get to look like what my damaged brain tells me is pretty.  Summer is when I get up earlier than the sun to swim, pushing my body to complete exhaustion only for it to serve me no use. Summer is looking in the mirror, and seeing fat that doesn’t go away.  Avoiding the mirror because I can’t stand it. Your staple Nike shorts cut off my circulation and force me to look at the dimple-like depressions and extending stretch marks that pollute my thighs.  Summer is where I sit at my computer, staring blankly at the screen, unable to do the simplest task of clearing out my inbox because I simply can’t bring myself to. Summer is when I neglect my duties, and still hold the hope that I will be that girl, the one that’s unbelievably intelligent, good at everything she tries, and who everyone adores.  Summer is when I want to be a writer, but never once pick up a pen. It’s hopes and dreams dashed, and the only reason is me. Summer is wanting to throw up, not at the sight of food or mess, but at random objects and thoughts in my daily life. Summer is my mother yelling at me for everything, pulling my hair and shoving me around, hating me for not being ‘the person she knows I am’.  Summer is when I can’t go to sleep, and write this instead. My mind is racing with thoughts of a typical self-loathing nature, yet I can’t seem to feel anything. Not sadness, not anger, and most definitely not happiness. Even my frequent frustration is dulled as I grasp at the knotted strings of my emotions. They are all balled up and pressed together, and I can’t seem to find either end.

Last summer, I wanted to die.  I wanted to fall off the face of the earth, never to be seen again.  I cried and I cried and I cried because my life was pathetic. My only friends were fictional, and even those could so easily be ripped from me.  I had no control and I wanted to give it up once and for all. In typical fashion, I didn’t have the determination to do it, to end it all. In a sense, I never would have anyway.  I remember feeling helpless and angry. I was miserable. I didn’t understand how I could be subjected to this life. What had I done to deserve it? I wanted to die, but never truly believed I was ill, even when I was hurting myself physically.  I wasn’t cutting, so it couldn’t be self harm, right? At least then I felt something.

This summer, I am and feel like nothing.  Nothing, like a black and white movie that drags on forever.  You can’t leave because you already bought the ticket, and your cheap self is sitting in the theater, seeing the purchase through.  The characters never say anything to each other, instead living on in their own twisted realities. The music is the only thing that can make you feel, but an odd heaviness forces you to tune it out, and even that glimpse of emotion is stolen from you.  I’m stuck in the theater, avoiding the nothingness of my movie, closing my eyes in temporary death for as long as I can. I eat, and I regret it, or I don’t and end up feeling even more empty. I pretend to love, pretend I am loved, and am eaten up by sorrow because I never get to stop pretending.  Shame is all I feel, and it is joined by regret and disgust in the absence of my truth. The movie may be in black and white, but that doesn’t discount the million shades of gray that complicate everything. I don’t feel real and my life doesn’t feel real and all I know is that it’s the middle of summer and I still can’t fall asleep.