You feel it first in the place where most rest lies. There's a break in the heat, a rounding of the edges lulling you to sleep. And you will—you will sleep despite the nights that preceded this one. Nights where the heat landed like a blanket you couldn't kick off. Nights where the rain didn’t come like you’d hoped for to offer relief. Nights where your hair curled before the day could even begin. You will sleep even though there will be nights that follow like an unwelcome sequel to the ones you remember. Where even sitting solitarily casts a sweat across your arms and legs. Only between those, the future and past, is this night—one where a slate is cleared just as evening bottoms out around you. Like nature has lost its gamble with Autumn. The air will be lifted for the hours ahead, if only the ones you will be asleep in. That is all you really need. It is a change in the season. Summer is nearly over. Now the real rest begins.
I have not been quite who I like to be for some time now. I feel myself separating like the seams of a person from their shadow. My body is here and my spirit is some ether place. It is too hot to close the doors in any room to be alone. To have the privacy where I might stitch myself together again. The only part of me that rests is physical with my essence in other places and even then I do so poorly. I sleep waking and turning to a colder pillow and spot on my mattress. The ocean is far away, now that I am older. I cannot return my mind to my body with a swim as I might have each early afternoon in my youth. I’m tired—no I’m more than that. It is a profound tired. I felt, at the start of this season, afraid for its arrival, mourning it even. Putting my duvet on a top shelf, packing away my pants for other seasons feeling like I was losing something. And I was. I was losing myself. Summer is no longer a vacation. I’m not sure if it ever really was.
I began to understand this over the last few years. July arrived and I wanted more time and yet also wanted no delay on good weather. Our memory of summer is a haze and imperfect even when it is so close. If I think hard enough on what I wanted on those cold days, the portrait of summer looks remarkably like the days of June and September. The weeks just before I lose myself. The weeks I finally have her back. The perfect in-between. The air is warm and the leaves are green. There is the right amount of night for lounging. There is just enough warmth left in a day. Autumn is migrating towards us. I miss myself. I miss what was taken. The end of summer was to me the only conceivable way to get her back. Those cold nights, those solitary evenings where summer is a little under the weather. Those are the nights I have always longed for. I saw myself. I woke the following morning different and the same. Not that I was back but that I was hopeful she was close.
I was told once that it is important to go to bed before midnight. The quality of sleep, the quality of life for people who fulfill this simple thing is substantially better. Before I found this out I was in bed by 11:30. I’d stay up but I was ready at least for sleep in the physical way. After this fact was presented to me, however, I found I lingered a little later. Once I discovered that there was a goal I found it increasingly difficult to land near it. If it were a late night, I’d make it later. I was never in bed before 11:30. If midnight was closing in I’d give up on a goal that I had never set for myself in the first place. It was information I had heard at a time when I was often working late. And yet so long after those conditions, I found it difficult to not see midnight, not see the final hour of a day, as the impossible hurdle between me and a good thing. I was almost worse in discovering what good rest was. Summer makes me tired but I think I have been tired for longer than I can remember. I might blame the heat but perhaps the year itself has made it easier to let the essence of myself vanish. Perhaps only I am to blame for my languishing. So to say, I have never been very good at resting.
It is true I feel summer takes me from myself and makes it harder to return. I can see moments, pieces where I tried to bring myself back. Afternoons in my yard reading my book or mornings in bed with the AC blowing on my legs daydreaming. They tell kids if you’re lost to stand in one place. I did what I was taught. I was waiting until I came back looking for me. I did nothing. The only kind of rest I knew how. I let it all go. I ran out of everything. Hours, days, detergent, toothpaste, patience, energy. I went to bed tired and woke up the same. I did not come back for myself. There was nothing to come back to. I felt uncomfortable in my house. I only felt at home in the ocean. A space that chills you at your core. Something you run into before returning to the warmth. And only in this place, with my body substantially hidden from the world, do I get to let out a kind of relief. To be held within something dangerous and feel safe however naive that may be because I am on my own and in my own company again. I disappear beneath the depth of it. How much the ocean seems like winter now that I say that. Do you see though? What I saw? I am not a child anymore.
Self-sabotage to me has always presented a particular kind of intention. I never understood it. How do you fail yourself on purpose? I know now. You remove the space to rest what needed resting. You lack intention at all that isn’t purely self-serving. You stop writing in your journal because no one will read it. You put your headphones in and forget to play music because even if it will make you happy it won’t fix how tired you feel. You discover it is 11 and decide your time has run out, so you waste the rest of it on your phone. The profound nature of my tired might only derive from due to the angle of self-infliction.
In order to reclaim myself, I must make space for what was taken. In the heat how often I spent my days doing nothing. How lonely it was, how far I seemed from myself. Profound rest moved with intention. I had confused my tired for another. I had neglected what ought not to be neglected. I remember though the things I used to do which seemed to vanish from my life so easily when I got tired. I remember how much time I took. Standing in the mirror and singing to myself, writing in my journal before bed.
It is September. Now the real rest begins.
I have been showering with my music again. Rest as joy. I deep cleaned my apartment. Rest as work. I made dinner early. Not in the hopes of getting to bed sooner, but because I wouldn’t cook if I sat down. Rest as a nurture. I have been folding my laundry. Rest as taking your time. I am reverting back to myself. Tomorrow summer might not be over, but I will buy my good soap again. I will water my plants, I will shake my sheets out. I will sweep beneath my desk, and pull my curtains back. I will light candles, I will place flowers in the vases, I will open the windows for new air. I will put to rest the thing I have become.
You feel it first in the place where most rest lies. Yourself. There's a break in the heat, a rounding of the edges lulling you to sleep. And you will—you will sleep now despite the rests that preceded this one. Moments where you found a part of you was somewhere else. Nights where sleeping was separate from resting. Sleep that offered no relief. And you will rest nicely even though you know you might lose yourself again. Where once more sitting solitarily in the moments before autumn you find you are missing something. Only between those, the future and past, is this night—one where a slate is cleared just as evening bottoms out around you. The tired will lift for the hours ahead, if only the ones you will be resting in. That is all you really need to remember how to bring yourself home. The change of a season, a return. The real rest has begun.
Don’t call if it’s after midnight.
I’ve been trying not to answer.
“That’s what he did—fix things, fix people, and make sure everything held together. I loved him so much for that, and felt that I would never be able to repay him for the thousands of simple things he did for me.” Tell Me Everything by Erika Krouse
I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. The tension of knowing there is nothing left to say, but wishing there was. Like the last moments you get with someone you love who you’re more than aware is about to vanish in a more real way than you could possibly comprehend. And you’re trying to find something else to say, but you know it’s over, it’s all really and truly over.” August 24th, 2022 1:37 PM
I suppose too I believe that if nothing is made or destroyed that memory will burn itself somewhere in the universe. The universe remembers everything. I blow a kiss to the sky for all the people who have no names, who existed not so long ago. August 29th, 2022 10:50 PM
In our haste to escape summer, we run so fast it shocks us when we discover halfway through September that in many ways summer is still here, in fact, it has caught up to us all over again. The idea to talk about rest for September was a slow realization, but I find it is the perfect month for it. There is no time so relieving as this month. School is not yet up and running. The threads of autumn are being sewn in at the hems of our days. Sunsets at 7:30 and chill commutes. I see fall, but, I see summer too. And as happy as I am that it is ending I’d like for once to enjoy the view as it goes by. So to say yes it is September but summer isn’t over yet. There’s watermelon still left to eat I’m sure. Fruit stands to peruse. I am going to wear my shorts even though I’m sick of them and I’ll let the world see my outfit without the cover of a jacket. I’m sure on late cold nights in the dead of winter I’ll be longing for that opportunity. I am not running anymore. Actually, I’m going to rest a while. It hasn’t been a good summer, but its almost over. What a nice month to take a rest. Let’s get a table outside, the heat has broken at last. I want to watch the end. This small reprieve might get us out of this season alive.
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Here’s to Starbucks Fridays, profound rest, and summer’s eventual end.
Love always,
Chloé
I loved this piece so much I had to write my own in reaction to it. I always appreciate the intimate scale of your writing. Always succinct. Always so much of myself in it.