Summer Self...

Do I actually become someone else over the summer?  It always seems like it.  I am not sure I like summer me any better than I like regular old year round me.  I think I am tanner in the summer, but other than that, I guess there is no appreciable difference between the summer me and the other me’s.

My favorite me is the fall me.  I love fall.  It is my favorite season.  I love the crispness in the air, the cool mornings and trailing light of early evening.  I love the clothes, football and the feeling that life really does begin again in the fall.

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall”. F. Scott Fitzgerald.  The Great Gatsby.

I have always felt this was one of the truer things F. Scott wrote.  I am not sure any of us knew this before he wrote it.

Summer me is reckless and carefree.  She is unconcerned with work and duty and all of the things that make her life possible.  Fall me is happier, more present, balanced between what she must do and what she enjoys doing.  Summer feels like a frenzied reclamation of youth, whereas fall feels like a snuggling into ancient wisdom.

The quote that speaks to me most is one from Georgia O’Keeffe, “I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.”  She was speaking of a significant mental health crisis, me only a mild one.  This summer I felt like I was also waiting for me to be me again, but a better version, one that was free from my previous attempts at relating to the world around me.  A me that was more evolved than years past.  I emerge this year, wiser, a bit lonelier as I successfully dodged any summer time romances that restricted and confined.

As fall sets in, I can feel myself returning to the me I have had trouble connecting up with all summer.  I guess, I felt a bit wasted on myself.  Disconnected from my core, unsure of what to do next.  I have not found clarity on the whole “what comes next” question.  But feel that I have moved closer to acceptance that it will come no matter what I do or how much I may not like it.

Life feels intensely mine again as fall breaks upon me.  I am here, present, living.  I was also doing that all summer but somehow now, it feels differently.  I appear to need the coolness of fall to emerge from the tornado of activity summer usually brings.

My time and routines freed up for the moment before darkness descends once more.  Winter me is not a great deal of fun because she tends to go to bed at 7 pm.  The early onset of darkness, sending me to bed early due to me often feeling like night time is a time to be avoided.  I need to move myself past myself but I know, no matter how much effort I put in, I will always be the person at home in front of the fire, snuggling into the chill of winter air.  I go within in Winter, every year, no exceptions.

I am grateful to have survived summer’s demands and have this nostalgic feeling of coming home to myself again.  Fall is full of possibilities and my internal landscape feels expansive and flexible.  Fall brings on a feeling of hope for me.

I haven’t given much thought to Spring me, but in years past she tends to travel.  Not sure what this spring version of me shall bring...I guess I first must survive the Winter me to see what I blossom into come March.

I like thinking of myself as a seasonal being.  Stations of life that are encapsulated by this seasonal awareness and awakening.  I am always me, but it seems the time of year greatly influences and directs my ability to be present with myself.  Whether I am a comfort of myself or an irritant.

Again, still...