I'm doing much the same thing that I've spent years doing, sitting at a table in the corner of the Black Drop, looking out the window, waiting for my shift to start, people watching. Today is blustery and has ranged from sunny and happy to grey and ominous. I really wish June would hurry up and just be summer, already. I need the sunshine, crave it, yearn for it almost like missing home when one is far away. I don't know how to descrive it in a way that doesn't sound crazy, but when it is cold like this, I can feel the chill in my bones. My skin feels like layers o thick fabric that have gotten wet, heavy and shapeless.
This weather weighs on my chest, too. I keep thinking of summer here, of putting my feet in Toad Lake, of drinking sangria out of too big plastic cups while reading a book in my backyard, of packing up the car with all our camping gear and a dog or two and heading out to a beach, of long drives with the sun roof open and John putting on only songs I will sing along with at the top of my lungs, of the smell of the grill and swatting mosquitos, of playing catch with John, of riding my bike, of running and running and never wanting to stop.
This summer feels... different. I can't wait for it while I dread it. I want the weather and the warmth, for sure, but this summer will be a much different summer for me, socially, than I have experienced in the last few years. Things have changed so much with all my social circles, and the upheaval has meant that the people I look forward to spending all that time with in summer aren't really here in the same capacity. My brain chemistry the last few weeks has meant a big fight with one of the most important people in my life, and it makes me heartsick and physically ill. Even without the fight, though, things have changed so much in that relationship suddenly that I don't have it as a comfort anymore. I fought for years for a place in it that I have been shoved out of, and that's just the way it goes. It was a definite eventuality, and I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't see it happening so dramatically and quickly or at this juncture. Then again, when big change happens, do we ever really expect it? Are we ever really ready to be tossed out of something we count on and love? Probably not.
I'm spending most of my time trying not to be an energy vampire. I know that when it gets to this point in the year, the weather and the stress of fall and winter coalesce to make me a really negative and pessimistic person. I like to think of myself as an optimist, but quite often I am forced to admit that this view of myself isn't an accurate reality. John constantly tells me how negative I am, that I make my own problems as a function of my outlook, that I have no reason to make myself unhappy. He is often right, although it pains me to admit it.
Outside the windows, the weather has turned from ominous to overtly threatening to downright torrential. The skies opened up and suddenly every street, every sidewalk, every parking lot is a sheet of moving water. Jess smokes a cigarette in an outside chair while suddenly a river runs down the middle of the pavement. The wind has picked back up and billows in gusts of sideways raindrops, spraying pedestrians and bicyclists fighting into it with little tiny needles of cold and wet. The rain is falling so hard that it's hitting the sheets of water on the ground, and creating rain that goes from the ground upwards, over the tops of your shoes and soaks you to the knees if you're unlucky enough to get caught walking. Thunder has just boomed and receded. Another June day in the extreme northwest of Washington.
Not surprisingly, my moods mirror the changes outside. Instead of wondering at the amazing power of this downpour, I'm irritated I couldn't go walk and get a burrito, or that it's June and the weather still looks like this, or that I didn't get the chance to eat before working. It's almost 4 and the grand total of what I've eaten today is a chex mix snack bar. I don't want to work today, even though I actually really love my job, and I am not looking forward to the next two hours behind the counter.
I tried to make my mood lift a bit yesterday by bleaching my hair. I thought that if I went blond again for the summer, I'd be much more likely to enjoy crappy weather. Know what I found out? When you dye your hair black and then bleach it out, it turns orange. Whoops. So, today I'm wearing a hat and trying to ignore the fact that I am going to need to do something else to it before I'm fit to be seen in public. I was trying to take a webcam picture and post it to show you how truly awful it is, but I just spent 15 minutes trying to find the webcam program that John apparently didn't install, even though he installed the drivers.
Ok, back to the grind.
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