Summer This Year

I don’t like summer, she’s my worst enemy. Someone more beautiful than I. I fear the heat and the endlessly empty days. Yet I crave summer, want it like I want them to actually adapt Ella Enchanted accurately. 

This summer I want to run away to the sea and let my hair go wild with saltwater. And I want to walk to coffee shops and finally meet the girl I met online in 10th grade in the flesh. This summer is a summer of strawberries and daisies and sunsets. I want hot days with no responsibilities where we can get acai bowls and matcha and sit by the pool and paint our toenails hot pink.

I want to read gothic novels during thunderstorms and enter my Bronte era while everyone else is into The Summer I Turned Pretty. I want to roll down the windows and blast pop music and drive into the sunset.

I want to take spontaneous picnics and have uber planned picnics. And I want to go to New York City and Boston and explore and live like I’ve never lived before. I want to see sunrises from open fields and find tea cups at yard sales.

I want to stop fearing summer and start living her. Stop worrying about it being perfect and just enjoy swimming and barbecues and hiding out from the heat in airconditioned crypts. Maybe I need to stop worrying about wasting my summer, because that’s how I waste it. Thinking about how it could be if I was spending it in Europe or lived in a smaller town or if my friends lived closer. Actually, I think that's how everything gets wasted. We worry we’re going to grow apart from our friends so we don’t enjoy the time we have with them. We worry about college so we waste high school. We worry about finding love so we forget to love.

We’re wasting our lives with perfection. We’re wasting our lives by waiting for better days. 

My summer may not look like my pinterest boards but I am going to take pictures anyways. 

Maybe I can’t go to the concerts I want to go to, but I can go to local bands playing on the green and have fun anyways. I may not be able to spend a week in a beach town but I can swim at a lake and get coffee and wear seashell jewelry. You may not find what you’re looking for, but that doesn't mean the searching was wasted. 

I used to ruin everything for myself. I worried about what I was wearing, I would get antsy cause it was too hot or too cold or not the way I imagined it. Now I'm basking in the things that feel wrong. Maybe it’s okay that we ate pbj on the beach instead of getting tropical smoothies from a cute beachside stand. Maybe my jean shorts and decade old t-shirt is aesthetic enough and none of this actually matters. Maybe it’s beautiful because it didn’t go the way I expected it to go.

Stop wasting it.

This summer lets live in the time we have. Let’s not pass on experiences and beauty because it wasn’t what we hoped for or expected.

 Belle Thomas

Belle is the writer and dreamer behind An Old Fashioned Girl. She is passionate about reminding girls of their identity in Christ, classic books, history, Louisa May Alcott, and earl grey tea. ​​