After several months that have been particularly dark in Britain between October and all the first four months of January this year, the streets have finally stopped to drag us into darkness and melancholy on our way back home from a long exhausting day. If we’re lucky, we even have some sunlight kiss our skin as soon as we leave our home almost happily the morning after. This year’s winter depression once again caused enthusiastic Instagrammers to move to twitter to point out their seasonal suffering, but now that the temporary break seems to be over, they can finally come out of their caves to celebrate all the instagrammable scenery summer has to offer. You can spot them quite easily, and if you look around, not only will you see teenagers indulge in their third parent-funded Starbucks frappe this week on a lovely Tuesday morning, but there’s even more people documenting this historical annual event on their phones, noting that they are so feeling the #summervibes.
Nights that used to be filled with hours of acrobatic elegance trying to wrap oneself up in layers to turn into a human burrito will now be replaced with the effort to be able to shed our thermos skin, which we’ve grown during the winter months. All those sweaty, sleepless nights will not anymore be exclusive to the sexually active, since summer is ready to include anyone now without discriminating against the lonely or deliberate singles amongst us. Excuses like staying at home on a Saturday night simply because there might be potential for rain are not acceptable anymore, pushing every anti-social cynic’s creative boundaries to find valid reasons not to commit to the immediate sociability that summer brings with it. Although he might not agree that sunshine is a valid reason to drag someone out of their safe and comforting space, he will have to agree to a cold one with some friends outside in British weather, which will probably turn equally as cold as soon as they’ve all finished their beers.
With all these changes and transformations, how can you not love summer and glorify everything that it brings with it like a father bringing wrapped up surprises home to his children? How can you not love the season of denim short wedgies and kamikaze insects and killer bees attacking you after every microscopic movement you make? Heat waves and a sun that gets a little more screen time than during the rest of the year give you a slight foretaste of hell, either motivating you to do good in life to end up in cool heaven, or slightly burning your skin as an encouraging reminder that everything good in life is not as good as you thought.
Although not every aspect of summer might be overly comfortable, at least constant sweaty armpits give you some personal feeling of persistence and perseverance for perhaps even the first time in your life. Melting ice creams that the ever so helpful sun helps you to lick off in front of your eyes right before you have enough time to do it yourself is another nice consolation that there are other disappointments out there in life that aren’t entirely about you. Summer must surely be the best metaphorical therapist, which only drains our bank accounts if we decide to use it as an excuse to go on holiday.
As experienced but forgotten every year, months of suffering are now ending in an annually recurring summer spree full of sunburns and mosquito stings. As the masochists that we are, we can’t wait to throw ourselves out there like soldiers in the most dangerous zones of a battlefield, dreading dehydrated festivals consisting of rubbing on each others’ sweaty skin and preconditioning ourselves for deafness, but enjoying the material for complaint later. Don’t forget those pollen allergists, who happily and fully voluntarily cough and sneeze through flower fields as a symbolic suicidal attempt for the sake of enjoying the summer sun and poisonous nature in return. Pretending to enjoy these dangers in life in an attempt to fill other people’s lives with the delusion of a happy and fulfilling summer must truly be one of the greatest acts of daily heroism. At least it’ll only be a couple of months until we yet again wish for the comfort of cold, dark days hugging us like a blanket of pity and self diagnosis, only so we can do it all over again next year.
