Summer is Stressful (And No One is Talking About It)
I was talking with my therapist the other day, which is how I start most of these writing pieces, but that’s really the way the world should be — so anyway. I was talking with my therapist the other day about rain. I was saying that I craved rain. And that it’s almost shameful, like a secret, whispered quietly. I was saying that you can tell you’re a long term North-Westerner (I’m approaching five years in Seattle which is crazy), and probably an Upstate New Yorker and New Englander and someone from any other dismal cloudy place too, when you secretly, guiltily, can’t wait for summer to end.
In these places, where the weather is crap ten months out of the year (Seattle rains every single day. Tell all your friends.) we spend our dark hours of winter time craving summer. Long days outside, daylight until 9pm, cocktails on patios, floating on lakes, summer barbecues with friends, the list goes on. And then, somehow it becomes July, then August, and we have summer stress. Or at least I do. And I bet you money I’m not alone. We’ve spent the last six weeks scrolling our social media feeds watching other people post about vacations, mountain peaks, bike rides, beach games of frisbee, hang sessions with friends in the park, and cute captions like #vacayyyyymood and #outofofficeemailwhodis (ok, I haven’t actually seen that one, but you know I’m not far off the mark...) And we (okay I- I’ll use first person for the purposes of not presuming, but you know you do it too…) sit on my couch, or at work etc. or before going to bed scrolling through photos of sun and water and laughter and hard seltzer, filled with the ironic, stressful anxiety that OMG I’M NOT DOING ENOUGH TO DE-STRESS AND EVERYONE KNOWS EXACTLY HOW LAME I AM FOR BINGE WATCHING SIX EPISODES OF ‘RIVERDALE’ ON A SUNNY DAY. And I lie awake, panicked that summer is swiftly passing me by like a rock stuck in the rapid flowing river.
And the cataclysm of this found me in my therapist’s office (obviously on a very sunny day), talking about rain. And how, all I wanted more than anything, was a week’s worth of rainy days. I wanted to take long baths. I wanted to watch movies and read my book on the couch without feeling tragically guilty every time I looked at the blue sky outside my window. I wanted to sit in some moody coffee shop and sip espresso. I wanted to nap in the middle of the day not needing to lather on sunscreen. In essence, I wanted to really, fully just relax.
In early June, I fell off my bike and broke my arm. Not a tragic break, but enough to keep me from doing much of anything arm-wise for a while. It was also the day of my graduate school graduation, the cumulation of three incredibly stressful years. When I got up, dazed on the side of the bike path, clutching my arm, my head spinning, the first thing I felt (and it feels weird to even write this) was a complete and total wave of relief. I somehow walked my bike to a bench near by, called my boyfriend to come pick me up and take me to urgent care, and then with one hand, emailed the research graduate students I was supposed to be meeting at the ferry dock. I told them I had had an accident and wasn’t going to be able to come. And I felt elated.
During the X-Ray, I was praying for it to be broken. I was praying for post-concussion symptoms so I wouldn’t need to go to work the following week, validated by a doctor’s note. How f*cked up is that? When it WAS broken I had to email my managers of the outdoor companies I was slated to work for and tell them I was going to be out for the summer. And when I pressed the ‘send’ button, I felt about 100 pounds lighter. Because, guess what? It wasn’t MY fault I fell off my bike! I was completely absolved of blame with only compassion and pity on the other end.
“It sounds like,” my therapist mused the other day, as I sat and told her these things, fidgeting with my shirt, not able to make eye contact, “you need permission to relax.”
Well… yeah.
And it’s true. I honestly get excited about being sick, because finally I feel allowed to not doing anything. Same reason I like camping; I don’t have any other options but to sit around — I am literally FORCED to do nothing. About a week after my accident, I had gone to see my other therapist. It was our last session, as I was no longer a student at the university. I told her about the bike fall, about not being able to work this summer and feeling anxious about it.
“Erin,” she told me. “No offense, but it seems like the universe has LITERALLY hit you over the head (I did in fact have post concussion symptoms) that you need to relax. I suggest you take the hint.”
As her parting words, she told me it would be difficult (she’s know me for three years and knows if there’s anything that’s hard for me, it’s sitting still). She told me to resist the urge to plan, to need to fill space, and instead to sit with the discomfort and watch what comes up. Especially with recovering from burnout via three years of grad school and difficult secondary traumas (which is an entire other topic I won’t get into here). The key is to move slow, fight the anxious energy that keeps us (me) busy and always moving to the next thing, keeping us (me) from dealing with the difficulties of the present. Easier said than done.
So I ended up taking most of the month of July off. I bought plane tickets to visit friends in Upstate New York, and family in Boston. Even before that, my friends had permits to go backpacking a couple days after the accident, when I was laid up in a sling. I couldn’t even muster the energy to be sad about it. When I got to New York in mid July, a beautiful cabin on a quiet lake with close friends, I slept most of the time (granted, assisted by a wicked wine hangover and travel exhaustion). I sat on the porch in an Adirondack chair under the pine trees with a cup of coffee, watching my friends canoe/ swim and paddle board (all activities involving arm motion), and I tried via therapist recommendation to notice my emotions. Generally, they look like this Gollum vs. Smeagol in the pool of water exchange.
Erin 1: “WHY AREN’T WE SWIMMING WE LOVE SWIMMING WE’RE NOT WORTH ANYTHING IF WE DON’T GO SWIMMING! EVERYONE WILL THINK WE’RE BORNG!”
Erin 2: “Shhhhhhhhh. Drink your coffee. Look at the mountains and the ripples on the water. Take a deep breath in. Be grateful for this time with your close friends. Listen to their laughter over the water and let that smile sink deep into your soul.”
Erin 1: “NOOOOOO WE LOVE PADDLING! WE ARE A USELESS PERSON IF WE AREN’T ADVENTURING ALL THE TIME!”
And so on.
All. Summer. Long.
All kidding aside though, it’s been really really hard. Especially with the illogical but very real pressures that this is the ONLY TIME (says my Gollum brain)I have to relax before starting a new job in the fall. And social media doesn’t help. I read somewhere that Sophie Turner’s cell phone case says “Social Media is Bad for Your Mental Health.” That ever present FOMO, that idea that we’re constantly missing out and not doing enough, gets multiplied by a thousand in the summer. Even little things, like seeing photos of people going to the park after work, make us feel like s*it. And only when we have our own adventure, post something and get the likes do we (I) feel validated, until a couple hours later we (I) sink back down into the FOMO all over again. And the cycle goes on. For example, a couple days ago I drove up to Bellingham, a hippie college town a couple hours north of Seattle to go hiking and oyster eating with a good friend. It was really a lovely day, and so I posted about it. “Finally” the evil Gollum whispered on my shoulder. “We are having a GOOD TIME and EVERYONE WILL KNOW.”
I wonder though, sitting on that beach shucking oysters, how I would have felt if I didn’t have my phone. Would I have noticed more the light on the water, the boats moving in the distance. Looked at the islands and the pine trees on the shore. Would I have been able to just…be?
My cousin told me a few weeks ago that she had a day in May where she closed all the blinds in her house, even though it was one of those first sunny Seattle spring days where everyone filters outside like zombies unable to control themselves. And she laid in bed all day, and watched “Parks and Rec” and generally chilled, hard. And she needed it. And I thought it was just so brave. Radical self-care to the core.
Another example, yesterday I drove to a network of trails and went on a run. Then I went to a beach by a lake and went in the water. It was nice I guess, but I really hate running (broken arm, limited options), I feel slow and out of shape. I was hungover from a concert the night before and had a headache. The beach was crowded. But I’d never tell you those things on social media. Really the best part of my whole day was sitting on the couch with my boyfriend in a bathrobe eating smoked salmon from the grocery store and watching “The Chef Show” (recommended.) You know, rainy day stuff… But again, I’d never tell you that.
So… what’s the moral here? Well. I guess, let’s have a toast and raise your summer porch cocktail you’ve so carefully photographed and captioned to the coming rain. And raise a Whiteclaw to the serious struggles of summer and anyone who’s too shameful to admit it. I just want you to know that you’re not alone, and when you didn’t go to that barbecue, didn’t go on that hike, beach trip, etc. and stayed inside and ate chips and watched “Riverdale” (GUYS ARCHIE GOT HOT), that you too, are just as worth it.
And guess what? I’ll probably go on some more adventures this summer, and I’ll definitely post about it, because the Gollum in me SO desperately wants you- the world- to think I’m cool and exciting. And I will post this article on Facebook and definitely hit the re-fresh button every five minutes for the next three hours to see if anyone else ‘liked’ it. So for god sakes please ‘like’ it.
AND, I’ll also try to sit quietly and watch the world go by, take bubble baths and know that it’s okay to not be okay.
And that’s okay.
