Cruel Summer

Over dinner the other night, my family agreed that I am crazy now. Not showing up at my ex-boyfriend’s house or calling until he blocks my number crazy, but crazy nevertheless. I am punch-drunk, heat-drunk. Fifteen years ago I spent my summers eating cherries with my cousin Morgan. The red dye stained our fingers and matched our hair while we spit pits into the never-ending river. We used to laugh so hard the sticky-sweet juice would run down our chins. Then, messy faces and all, we dunked under the water and resurfaced gasping for the hazing summer air. However, ten years later, this summer is so hot that the mugginess seeps into my pores. A little dunk in the ocean doesn’t make it go away.

Five months ago I was taking sixteen credits, working thirty hours a week, and editing for too many magazines to count. Now I cry when the tag in my dress feels funny. Or if I think the man in the grocery store doesn’t like me. Or if I am stuck in traffic. Or because I couldn’t remember the words to my old favorite song. Usually though, I don’t really have a reason.

I never knew I was a nervous person before this summer. I have always been really good at being good. Last year my friends joked that I was too put together. I played every game to make every person think that I was a fully completed puzzle. I got the grades and the laughs and the friends and the clothes. I was convinced that it was so easy. It was easy to be on fire as long as you ran faster than the flame.

But somewhere along the way I exploded. I try to explain to my mom that I am drowning in the river that Morgan and I spit all the pits in. I sank to the bottom four months ago and now I stare at the cherry pits all day long and cry because I can’t fold my laundry. It was an all or nothing change. If I used to be perfect then now I am nothing.

My senior year of high school my book club advisor sat me down and told me I was going to burn out. He said he saw it in my eyes. So I pinched my hand so hard it bled and told everyone who listened that he was a terrible person. Two years later I think that if I killed him right then and there that the possibility of burning out would die with him.

So clearly I am in therapy. I mediate and take herbal supplements and breath three times through one nostril then three times out the other. I do it all. Then I scream and cry for so long that I think it wakes up the dead. Then I tell my therapist I had a good week and that I like her shirt so she will like me.

My mom moved me back to school on the last day of August. I sat there choking on the heat that I thought I left at home while my mom made my bed. Two hours later, my mom sat down to tell me that a year ago today I couldn’t stop crying. My old dorm room probably still has a puddle in it from that day. A year later I just wanted to stop sweating. She left a bag of cherries in the fridge on her way out.

Seven days into September I am eating the cherries on my bed while crying. I am swallowing the pits whole. I think they might taste better with tears on them.