Summer
Photo by Tillman James @_tillman_james_
6 magical weeks of freedom when you were a child
Donkey rides on northern beaches, covered in melted Mr Whippy ice cream Long plane rides to spend two weeks sweating in North American sunshine The smell of factor 50 sunscreen always lingering
Because your mother would fret about sunburn as you and your brother ran shrieking into freezing cold waters
Sharing hotel beds and hurtling down the motorway at what felt like a million miles an hour because you are seven and the world doesn't quite make sense yet, all you know is that your cousins wait at the other end of this monstrous journey and that you have missed them.
Things are a bit different now,
Summer lends itself to three-month long identity crises and getting so drunk in the garden of a friend two weeks before your eighteenth birthday that you have to be dragged into the passenger seat of your dad's car covered in your own vomit A year later it means stiflingly hot train journeys between the two cities you refer to as home and trips to the cinema to fill days that feel far too long
But you are making the most of being alone for the first summer in three years by saying yes to everything that life has to offer
A concert (or six), picnics, dancing in shitty clubs, you want it all because you are learning how to
live without guilt
Summer reminds you that there is an entire world out there that you so selfishly forgot about
Not anymore, you will do whatever it takes to allow joy back in.