summer wanes

It's a few minutes before nine o'clock and as I look out my window here, I see a brightly lit pool but a dark, dark sky. Just a few weeks ago, we might have just been rounding up our evening walk, returning to the car to drive home, sometimes by way of the grocery store for a treat. Tonight, our walk ended at least forty minutes ago and it was already getting a bit late-seeming then.

Summer, you have a good month left in you. It's days like today, when we spend the waning hours of the day on our walk, only to come home and realize it's barely past eight that I start to yearn for your friend Autumn. (Actually, I don't know that Summer and Autumn really are friends. Hmm.)

School starts soon (next week for most everyone I know) and it's strange to not be going back. It's strange to still feel so uncertain about what comes next. And, although autumn is my favorite season, I don't know that I'm looking forward to this one as much. I don't have a reason to go back to the place I've been going for the last decade. The friendships that took me so long to cultivate, for lack of a better word, seem to be slipping away and this makes me sad.

Part of this could be my living too long in my own head this summer. Part of this definitely is that, in living so much in my own head and dwelling in my own doubts and insecurities, I've been lax in my end of the friendship deal. I've not been available enough to my friends and, for that, I apologize. Sometimes I let the dark, foggy state so envelope me that I just can't find the energy to reach out. And, if I do, I don't make that many efforts. Any time I reach out and there isn't anyone immediately at the other end of my reach, I start to assume that my grasp is unwanted and then I wallow in more doubt and insecurity. I don't mean to be like this, but I've spent the last almost three decades becoming this way. I'm working on it, if only right now by acknowledging it.

So, anyhow, although I'm feeling this overwhelming sense of sadness, I'm sending this out instead:



I'll be walking in the park if you need to know where to find me. And, even more importantly, if anyone else is feeling some of what I didn't intend to share above, please do reach out and I'll make the effort, that really isn't any effort at all, to be waiting.