I keep thinking about summer

It mystifies me how I spent 4 months doing almost nothing. I finished my finals, moved into the crapshack, and... was. I applied for a couple of jobs, I know, I got a volunteer position at the science centre, and I did that faithfully. I visited home, I went to a shakespeare in the park thing. I went to a food festival and a carnival. I went to the woods, a couple of times. I went to the gym, a couple of times. I wrote an essay applying for status as a special student and was declined. I was declined from a graduate position. I was delayed for another. I was rejected from a waitressing job. I was rejected from a lab position.

I remember bits and pieces from the summer in horrifying chunks. Buying my own dresser from IKEA and taking three days to assemble it, getting stumped at the step where you had to join two halves together and get about 8 pieces to line up at once- after trying to do it myself and hearing a crunch from one piece, I gave up. It got together eventually and then I unpacked my clothes. I also unpacked the supplies on my desk... but never my jewellery, and only a couple of pots and pans (which were mishandled by my roommates). I remember having to clean everything though, before I could move in- vacuuming as best I could with the shitty vacuum supplied, cleaning literal piles of fine silt off of furniture. On my third day there I was eating fried rice in bed when a bug larger than my pinky nail crawled out from underneath me somehow. I trapped it under a glass jar on my desk and didn't deal with it until I moved out.

At some point I reasoned that working at the desk and keeping my computer there might make me more productive. I'm not sure why I thought that would work, since it didn't. It was probably good for me to be sitting with better posture, I guess, and good for me to get out of bed. Lord knows there were days when the only reason I got out of bed was for food, and even then it was begrudingly since the kitchen was upstairs- an apartment with three floors is never a good idea. I remember a lot of lying in bed, scrolling through my phone until I ran out of content, adjusting and readjusting when my neck was uncomfortable. I remember getting irritated by my greasy hair, starting at the edges on the first day and gradually having that itch move closer and closer to my core until I finally gave in and used the shower that didn't quite drain properly to have a shower, four days later.

I remember my graduation. Sitting in the auditorium, listening to speeches I don't remember, watching name after name get called and listening for friends I knew so I could cheer a little louder. I remember that I didn't take my family up on the offer to stay with them and wishing I had. I got ready alone in my room, in the full length mirror, makeup next to me on a makeshift stand consisting of three empty shoeboxes that once held the desk supplies. I covered a painful, deep zit and hoped it wouldn't show on the photos. I tried my best to contour my chin, doubled by months of eating white cheese popcorn and doritos for dinner, and make my face, grown rounder for the same reasons, appear more like it used to look. I remember going out for dinner and enjoying it but wishing that my graduation had been a bigger deal. It was just sort of something that... happened.

The bigger deal was when I was driving my boyfriend home to get his things so he could stay the night and we pulled over to watch the sunset. While we were sitting there, snuggling as best you can in a car with a centre console, I admitted that once I had very different plans for that evening. Once upon a time I had told myself that if I made it to my grad, that was the last big event I really needed to see, and if I hadn't gotten into grad school by that time, I'd kill myself. June 13 was my Death Date. I wasn't supposed to live beyond it.

It's been 106 days. Maybe 107 by the time I publish this.

I didn't kill myself. My boyfriend came over and spent the night, and during the summer we also went camping again, I saw my dogs again, and I had a friend recommend a book to me that helped me get out of the worst of it. On our two year anniversary, my boyfriend and I celebrated together by spending the day together and spending the night together in my new apartment. The one I now share with my little sister, who got into school here. I'm responsible for picking her up after her night class and her choir practice. Who would be doing that if I wasn't here?

So maybe I spent a summer in a crappy little room with crappy blinds on big windows that faced a busy street and were always so noisy. Maybe I spent hours sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed wearing as little as possible eating frozen fruit and orange juice blended together because it was the only way I knew how to stay cool. Maybe I joined a gym and for the first month went only three times. So maybe my landlord was a crazy psychotic bitch intent on threatening me for money and not paying her rent to her landlord, who was incompetent and lazy. So maybe the place was dirty- in desperate need of TLC beyond what I have the professional know-how to provide or the responsibility to fix. Maybe I spent four months cooking without a microwave. Maybe I spent four months avoiding my roommates if at all possible- staying in my room when I heard their footsteps in the kitchen.

I got out of there. But I still think about it.

I was already depressed when I moved into a depressing situation. That's what I get for leaving the apartment search to the very last minute I suppose. But the memory is such a stain now- I don't remember a lot of good about this summer. Mostly a lot of bad, a lot of being hot and sweaty, the night I stayed up all night and then couldn't sleep because the blinds didn't block the sun at 5 AM and the traffic started at 6. A lot of feeling miserable and worthless. A lot of paranoia- does my landlord have a key? Will she come back? Where's this missing item- did I misplace it or did someone take it? Am I ever going to see my damage deposit again? How am I going to explain this gap to employers, or potential graduate supervisors? A lot of feeling like I was just burning money, pissing it away by lying around doing nothing in the city instead of just sucking it up and moving back home.

For all the terrible that was my final year at school, this summer was a thousand times worse.

-swegan