17:08:2025 Mid August
Beginning in August makes sense to me. It's when the next chapter starts to emerge from out of summer's desolation, I think. That's been the past couple weeks for me, but I guess more this week: it's really starting to feel like summer's ending, now, and the new year is beginning. Or at least the plans for beginning are starting. My annual isolation is ending, although it was a lot less severe this year than it has been in the past. I've been thinking I might go off of my socials for the last 2 weeks of summer but it's not really practical considering the committee prep I should be at least staying aware of. But the intention is there at least.
So the stillness has been broken. I emailed the director of music last Sunday and spent Monday wondering if I was going to get a reply that day or in several weeks time. Tuesday brought my ex into my messages for the first time in months, and really has made me reflect on my summer from a new perspective. I spent Tuesday processing - went for a swim, as seems to be my summer ritual for dealing with feelings regarding my ex (it's only really happened 3 times now, and swimming is very much its own thing, but I really appreciated having that kind of seasonal ritual to fall back on). After that the mundanity set back in and I realised just how different mine and my ex's summer's have been: they, apparently, have been thinking a lot over the past few months about a conversation we had, and want to talk again. I've spent the past few months watching the ending of that heartbreak, and, frankly, moving on. To go back to work on Wednesday, back to that mundanity, and realise I care more about whether I can still read bass clef than what they're up to really made me feel the weight of this summer and the months we've spent apart, the months I've spent becoming more and more myself again, letting summer swallow me, drifting further and further.
I say I spent Tuesday processing - a fairly accurate way to explain it, actually, but I found once I'd finished my bus ride with Lorde's David on repeat I was very content to be absolutely swallowed by sorting through classical music vinyls and running around the city (unsuccessfully) looking for postcards. The classical music seems to be sticking, which I'm glad about, because as I said, that email got sent and it's not getting unsent. I've given up on buying a cello and am now fully relying on the director of music to help me out - which I'm not too upset about because he seems nice and it's an excuse to make a proper acquaintance with him rather than our bizarrely nonexistent current relationship. It's an echo of changing my degree last year, to be sure, the mid-August email to a member of staff followed by the slightly terrified wait because you care way too much about this thing you only decided you wanted to do a week ago. I love how time repeats itself like that.
The mid-week I spent at work. Work is this August's boring mundanity, a more recent development really, or maybe before it was just more lonely and romanticised and now it's employment. But these last couple days I've been wandering, drawing, again, I'm making it through my summer sketchbook still, I think I'll reach halfway through the notebook which was my goal, playing guitar, and this evening I finally went blackberry picking with my sister. I've been putting it off for weeks - the blackberries have been out since late July, I just refuse on principle to start picking until mid August, it's an August activity to me at the earliest - but we got there. I'm still reminded of that time between year 7 and year 8 when I had Hollywood by MARINA stuck in my head and I was fucking around with my hair. The summer-fucking-around-with-my-hair I think might not be one of the changes that sticks this year, but we'll see. I'm trying to let myself be flexible and changeable into the autumn - I've really enjoyed just letting go and following my intuition this summer but it feels like a summer exclusive thing. My 'don't feel bound to pre- or post-summer you' feels like it's grounded in the transcience of summer - you experiment in summer because it's the time between times when you get to disappear for 3 months and emerge a different person than you went in. But autumn can be all playfulness when I let it, so hopefully I can let some of it through.
I've been feeling very changed these past couple weeks. Or the change has set in, I suppose. It's weird having an ex actively transitioning, because they're changing in a much more obvious way - I found out earlier that they'd openly changed their name and pronouns - but they're still thinking about me, whereas I'm much less obviously changed on the outside except for some new jewellery, a couple new clothes and very slightly different hair, and honestly just feel like I'm completely, I don't know. Detached, I guess. I'm gone. I'm a million miles away. But in a way that feels very back to form - that'll be coming home for you, I guess, but also just the solitude of being single. I feel the most myself I've ever been, maybe. I feel like every version of me that's come before. It's unusual for the end of summer/start of autumn, when I usually feel very brand new. My new is the old. I am who I was, but on purpose this time, maybe.
The last heatwave of the year is over now, and the last busy days of work with them, and I've finished all of my trips to visit my friends, and I'm starting to get into the album's I've bookmarked for September (No Place Like Home by Vacations, Reading Writing and Arithmetic by the Sundays), and this summer's expansive silence has been shattered, and plans for when I'm back in my uni city are in place. It's an ending of summer, for sure. One of several. I'm sure I'll come back to that.