A torrid, cloudless summer where the sun is burning through me worse than the eyes of my teachers when asking for the right answer. It makes you avert your eyes like your life depended on it (because it usually does), in both cases.
In summer normal people get inspired; they look at the endless sky and their chests balloon with inspiration and the need to let it burst. In the case of my fellow writers out there, they can't wait to grab the closest piece of paper (or nowadays, laptop, smartphone, basically anything with a password to keep unwanted eyes -usually parents' or siblings'- away because they know in an hour or two it won't seem as inspirational as they intended, or because they call it a 'sketch' which awaits to be refined; but in most of the cases by the refining level's time it's too late and the feeling is gone, it was there but it's gone). But I guess like the unique piece of flesh and a tiny bitsy brain here and there I am, I am mostly uninspired by summer.
Why, you ask?
Of course you don't, it's not like you care about my rattle.
Summer to me is not particularly freedom (school, through comparison, is the biggest reason people around me lift summer on an altar constructed from everybody's gathered textbooks and worship it like it was an offering form heaven in the shape of freedom), nor it is an opportunity to stay outside more. When I think about summer, what comes to my mind is the assault of mites from two years ago, in a rainy summer on a grassy hill, in which two of my friends fell victims and are, to this day, remembered as veterans of the surprise attack from the enemy. Just thinking of a pinky-nail-sized animal screwing and craving its way through my skin and into my body makes my head from time to time ceremoniously turn towards the grassy hill appearing innocently through my bedroom's window and then I narrow my eyes, darting deathly glares towards the hideouts of those hideous creatures. And even if I don't see it, I can feel them glaring back at me, as if accepting a soundless declaration of mutual hate.
Or when I think of summer, I think further back, to my uncle's mother in law. Really, a charming lady at her 440 pounds and with a face like a beaten sack of rotten potatoes where a mole as big as a bead stood on top of her nose like the cherry on top of the fancily dressed cake. I feel like I need to repeat that this was the charming part of her. Her personality, on the other hand, is what makes me shiver now and then, cocooned in my cozy blankets on the winter nights, waking form a nightmare in which it was supposedly summer. Then I'd sigh relieved and the coldness creeping into my bones assuring me of the snowy season would make me feel the gratefulness of a peasant for rain, or of a beggar for food. As if the colder it was, the more comforting and assuring it would be. Summer became something to be feared when I was seven, during a one-week visit to my uncle's house. We, as a family, never considered ourselves unlucky until we found out our period of visit intersected his mother-in-law's, which, trust me, made me question the gravity of my previous actions. I mean, nobody's that guilty that they deserve to spend a week under the same roof as that person. She was the grumpiest creature alive. She liked to believe that the Earth did rotate, indeed, but not around the sun; but around herself. Not even five minutes had passed since I had stepped into the house, that she turned her glaring onyx eyes at my sister and I and decided that we looked like the perfect pair of dwarfs to slave around her pretentious self. She skipped the introduction and made me clean the bug-infested wooden toilet like the ones you find in the deep country side, looking basically like a hole in a wooden platform surrounded by three wooden walls, a hanging, screeching door that most of the times you'd have to kick open when you want to enter and then hold for your dear life not to open while you're inside, and, optionally, a drilled ceiling. It was an acid heat, a murderous rain of sun rays that gave me such a sunburn that my parents had to ride the car back in the city to buy yogurt to put on my blistered red skin. I got bitten by three types of insects and saw a snake in the tall grass. By the time my parents came back, the woman had prepared an entire drama in which she was the victim to my impoliteness and I was only being taught a constructive lesson. Nobody believed her, but it still worked enough to make me continue to listen to her orders unable to say a word in defence. One night she didn't allow me to open the window because she was afraid the mosquitos would get it. My room became a heated oven and even after I stripped naked, I found it so hard to breathe and to touch any fabric because it would make me sweat rivers, that I couldn't close one eye the entire night. Then the next day she sent me to a neighbour (whose home was located on the other side of the mountain, over a river) to bring two litters of milk which she had ordered a few days ago. I supposedly was home alone because I wanted to catch up with sleeping while the rest of the family went of a trip in the forest. If I had known the witch would stay behind as well, I would've probably been inspired to leave with them, or at least to fake my own death before she'd see me worming about on the floor, still alive, and then assign me to another suicidal task. Imagine a seven year old crossing a mountain to unknown lands and bringing back two freaking litters of milk through the midday summer sun.
Anyway, the torturing went on, but the memory is so unpleasant that I'd rather lie and say that her appearance was her worst feature.
But I guess it's still summer.
No matter how much I'd wish it weren't.
My fellow writers would probably be blooming with beautiful ideas about travelling and enjoying the landscapes and breathtaking nature in the warmth of the season by now.
As they look at the bright sky reflecting on the still water of a lake like mirror, of dive with the fishes of the waving ocean, they get inspired to write about freedom and the beauty of humanity and creation.
I guess it's... believable. Summer is nice, if you look at it the right way.
I mean,
if you ignore the mites.
If whenever you eat summer cherries you don't think about moles.
If your skin does not look like Grand Canyon from dehydration and sunburn.
If you didn't have two bottles hunching your ass off while you climbed a mountain.
It's actually nice.
It all comes down to the way you look at it.
And a tiny bitsy memory here and there, forgotten.
Maybe I should try changing my perspective. Then I'd enjoy summer a lot more.
.
.
.
Or I might just lock myself in my enclosed room with drawn curtains and watch vampire series all day long, where people like me, afraid of sunlight, exist, and on contrary to being scarred with trauma like me, they're pretty damn hot.
I mean, seriously, it's not like any teen out there doesn't do this during summer. I wonder what their reasons are.
