Summer

I woke up this morning and read this quote

“I wait every year for summer, and it is usually good, but it is never as good as that summer I am always waiting for.”

I, still in bed, then googled "Why do I feel like I am always waiting?"

The searches come up mostly people who are waiting for something bad to happen.

That is not me. I am waiting for something good. More than something good, something meaningful.

I don't know what this supposed to mean. But I do know that the summer I am waiting for is always a summer that has come and gone. A summer of the past, more and more elusive by the second. To be honest, it didn't even need to be summer. What matters is that it was a moment that did not feel like an in between, a placeholder moment until the thing you are waiting for arrives.

These days, I feel like I am living a life of in-betweens, except they come one after the other, so much so that you forget that there is something that exists on the two sides, after in-betweens. I probably have always felt some version of this. It lingers at the bottom of my stomach, and comes alive when I feel sad or tired or bored.

I am bored a lot these days. It's the worst kind, it's the kind of boredom that lingers even when I am not bored. I should not be bored. My days are occupied with work, but it is a good balance, in that I can leave work and not think about work. My free time I have is filled with activities, I see friends multiple days a week. I am busy. And yet I am bored. How is possible to be busy and bored?

Maybe boredom is the wrong word. Maybe it is unhappiness. But it also feels simultaneously more and less than just that. Less, in that I don't think I am incapable of happiness. I laugh and smile and joke and there are moments when I feel such a rush of fondness for my friends, and a sense of gratitude for all the goodness that surrounds me. But they are so short-lasting, a quick burst and it fizzles and is gone, and I am back to my mundane routine. And once again, it is this gnawing sense of unfulfillment that lingers. Which I think why this also feels more than unhappiness. It is dissatisfaction, where everything, including momentary happiness, just feels not enough. And here I am now, in the middle of a Starbucks, writing while waiting for work to start. Trying to see if I squeeze out a solution in this hour that remains. I smell like a praline latte right now because that is what I spilled on my legs a few minutes ago. But even that doesn't make me unhappy.

I am trying to approach this strategically. When was the last time I felt this feeling? And when did it go away? The last time I felt this was in Florence. Surprisingly. This tells me that it is not something that being on vacation or in Europe will fix. I was running out of things to do after almost 3 weeks there, and with no friends and not speaking the language, I was bored out of my mind. I did not know how to be alone anymore, even though I had been fine living alone for the last 2 years in a global quarantine.

When did it end? When I went to Rome. Rome blew me out of the water. I don't know how to describe Rome other than to say that I love it almost as much as I love Paris. Rome was early mornings, and wind in my hair and unexpected goosebumps on every street corner and rich pasta and slow languid afternoons. I think in my travel journal I wrote: Rome cured me. After Rome, I wanted to be alone, there was much to see and feel and think about, that I enjoyed my own company. This feeling lingered well into Paris, where I spent a good month alone, meeting new people that came and went, visiting the same bookstores and bakeries and gardens, that by the end of the month felt like second nature, like I had grown up surrounded by it. And yet, they never failed to completely charm me and win me over as if it was still the first time. That is a Paris phenomena. I've asked two expats living in Paris if they every got used it, if Paris ever stopped being beautiful. They said no. Paris is Paris. And as I've discovered, you never love Paris as much as when you are not in Paris. That is the statement of the century when it comes to my love affair with that city, and one of these days I mean to sit down and write about it. But the timing never feels right enough for me to do a good job at it, so I push it off.

I got carried away. What was I going on about? Happiness. Or whatever you want to call this thing that I no longer possess. Is it fulfillment? I had started to google places to volunteer near me, but I realized I was hardly changing the world in Rome and Paris. And plus, I am helping people at work, which only brings temporary satisfaction. Something to look forward to? No, in fact quite the opposite. There was one day I spent in Paris, in which I just spent the day sitting in my favourite places, trying to memorize the way it felt to be in the present, to be able to look up and have the Louvre right there beside me. I looked up and down and back up again, and it was always still there, always just as easy. This thought made made me sad then, possibly more sad than it makes me now. To have something in the moment that you know you are bound to lose.

So what is it then? I really don't know anymore. I am trying to look up pottery classes or dance classes to sign up for, but they all started in September and are all full. In the meantime, I will continue to work and see friends and work and maybe write. Maybe I need a project, something to create and express myself through. Maybe I will read more. Maybe rockclimb more often. Either way, whatever it is, I need something more in my life to tide me over these next few months. Winter has just begun. It is still a long way til June. A few more months to go until I can once again attempt to find that summer I have been looking for.