Seasons

Summer. Blue skies, sweltering heat and not a cloud in sight – a world of happiness and colour, of warmth and serenity. I, I am Winter. Harsh, cold, bitter and sometimes dangerous. There are clouds and skies are grey. I am warm but this place fills me with ice – four seasons rolled into one, who knows that tomorrow brings.

Summer brought back memories for me. The good old days, when my grandparents would bring my older sister and I along the boardwalk for a casual aimless stroll – as we looked out onto the coastline, and saw the harbour fill with boats from horizons both near and afar. Summer made me smile – the one quarter of the year where I would from ear to ear, and I’d actually mean it. And she – I guess she was summer.

It was Autumn. Leaves fallen, school beginning, and life once again encompassed by the same mundane routine that society thrives itself upon. Repetitive. Boring. The same old shit really – but I guess it did have a little ounce of difference, just that it wasn’t in the same place. Moved out of home to go to college and try to pursue a degree in the 9 to 5 world that is millennialism – I found myself sitting on a park bench in a city far from home, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes wondering if there was any way that I could just make these four years fly, get home to my Mam and Dad and not have to rely on them as much anymore.

Truth was I couldn’t look after myself. Truth is I probably still can’t – for the most part. This city, it was new. Exciting and explorable – it should have made me smile, smile like I did last summer – but all it did was elicit fear. Fear of the unknown. Did I talk about it though? Would I admit I found things difficult? Fuck no, I’m way too obnoxious for that man. Hood up, headphones in, drown it out for a while and eventually it just won’t come back right? Wrong. Summer always comes to an end, which means the other seasons always eventually come along whether you like it or not.

I sat on that cold splintered bench and to be quite honest I barely had a clue where I was – all I knew was that I needed fresh air and that hopefully nobody would bother me here. I tried to light my cigarette but the wind was pretty ferocious and the flame kept blowing out, each time it flickered I got more and more frustrated, until eventually the gas ran out and I threw the lighter on the floor and smashed it into pieces. I couldn’t even light a fag – how in God’s name was I going to be able to cater for myself Monday to Friday? Cook, clean, motivate myself, do everything? It just wasn’t going to happen. I needed my re-assurance, and along it came with a random wave of fresh summer air, as a gorgeous figure emerged from the distance – and I suddenly had no problem re-engaging with my newfound surroundings.

“Need a hand?”, she says. I was shell-shocked. No one had ever gone out of their way and spoken to me up here, this was new – and instead of trying to portray to be this alternative independent embodiment of teen culture – I decided no, it was OK for me to admit that maybe I actually could use some help. Summer’s warmth lit up my cigarette, and we got chatting, and just for five minutes, I felt like maybe I wasn’t so alone in this world. I smiled just a little, like I would on a July evening, when I could sit out in the sun with a couple of beers, and just forget about the world for a little while. I guess I slept soundly that night, in the knowledge that maybe soon the sun would re-emerge.

I woke up that next morning to the sound of rain pelting the window, and wind threatening to lift the trees from the ground in which they were earthed, and all I could think was that nothing would ever lift me while I was earthed to rock bottom. Phone calls, group chats and social media just weren’t the same – I wanted to see the people I loved. I dragged myself up to the lecture hall, and as I walked into the room – suddenly the clouds broke. The rain stopped. The old guy who was spouting off about psychology made a song and dance about evolution for an hour while I half-heartedly paid attention, patiently waiting for the rain to return. I emerged, blinded by the strength of the sunbeams which radiated down upon the campus. Where had this sun come from?

It turned out I had forgotten my keys, and as I fumbled into my pockets for my phone to text my roommate, I again lost track of where I was for just a moment, the sun was making the screen hard to see and I eventually popped my head up again, to make direct eye contact with a now familiar face. She walked towards me, her smile filling the air with the refreshment that this world lacked. “Hey, I never knew you studied psychology.” [I didn’t either, I was just so stoned and lost, I ended up in the wrong lecture hall, but I was happy to play along.]

“Oh yeah, yeah, I switched modules.” Turned out we were headed in the same direction, and we decided to catch a coffee, and she invited me to some fresher’s party that was going ahead that night. I decided why not, so I dragged along a roommate and a bottle of vodka and hit the road. One drink turned into another, and three hours later here I am – snorting a line of cocaine off somebody I don’t knows tits. There is absolutely no sign of summer, but I am indifferent, as I decided to embrace the harsher elements of life. I took a girl home that night, had some pointless sex and then woke up the next morning, pretended nothing ever happened – sitting on campus on my coffee-infused comedown on an overcast September’s afternoon, when all of a sudden, the summer comes along.

What was it about this girl? No matter what the previous conditions, she would brighten up the world around her the minute she came along. Then it clicked with me, shit. I guess I really hit it off with her. One night turned into another, nights rolled into days, days rolled into weeks and here I was finally settled in my new life, the sun would never stop shining, I mean how could I complain about anything. In a world where I once dreaded the thought of waking up alone, I now greeted each day to the sounds of birds singing and the sun breaking through the curtains and a very same shine coming off my teeth simply because I just couldn’t stop smiling.

Then, something strange happened. Two weeks or so passed, and I hadn’t heard from her. I started to worry, had I done something wrong? Had she found someone new? Whatever it was, I made it my destiny to find out. That fortnight was dull, it was bitter, the wind was harsh, the breeze was cold, the kind that would numb your face and limbs as you walked into it – and then I realised, it was like this all along.

Sometimes, the sun doesn’t shine because of the weather, the sun shines because of who you’re around. I realised that physically maybe it had rained all month, maybe it did, I was none the wiser. All I cared about was the fact that I was living in a dream, a heatwave of sorts, where there wasn’t a cloud in sight. Summer and I met again, and ironically, on this day, the heavens decided to open. She told me she was having some problems of our own, and ultimately our relationship changed in its entirety.

They told me that when you go to college, you’ll grow up. They told me you’d learn things about life that you never knew before, and that you’d learn them in the strangest of ways – from all kinds of people. For once, they were actually right, as I sat alone that night drinking a cup of tea, realising that summer had thought me more than I had ever known before.

I learnt that summer even has rainy days, and for all its goodness and warmth, it has its flaws too. Summer is wonderful, makes everybody happy, but it can’t do it all the time. Sometimes Spring, Autumn and Winter get rolled into it too – and you just don’t know what you’re going to get. Summer told me that she could never love me because she could not learn to love herself, but I thought that if summer could learn to love winter, then the seasons would all become one – then I realised, everybody is different.

Some people are Spring, they’re still blooming, growing, and they show glimmers of both sunshine and grey. Some people are Autumn, changing, unique and unpredictable. Some people like me are Winter, cold, harsh and not like the others, but still some people’s favourites. And she was summer – warm, refreshing but not quite perfect, and then I realised nothing is.

And that’s when I became summer. I guess I’m all the seasons.