Summertime

As summer begins, I'm reminded that an entire year has matured since I've started my career. The warm breaths of summer begin to form droplets of sweat upon my brow with every errand I run and gives me one more reminder of how busy my life is. These signes of summer remind me of a time in my life when my mind was much more naive and body was less weary. I sound so dramatic as a 22 year old in the field for only a year, but it is a true depiction of how I have blossomed in the last year. I say blossom, because as heart wrenching as the last year may have been, it has shown me how much beauty there is deep within me that I needed to bring out in order to counteract the disheartening things I've seen and experienced, but most of all watched others experience. I've discovered the deep beauty lying dormant in what others often would call ugly in this world, and I've seen the intricate patterns that the beautiful and horrid weave. To discover such things is to blossom and wilt, but in surviving them the blossoming overshadows the wilting.

Summer brings memories of times when I ran free, or as free as my fearful nature will allow. Summer brings the feeling of possibility and adventure but also makes me lackadaisical. I know it seems contradictory to want adventure and to be lackadaisical, but that is me in a nutshell. I'm fickle. Through this last year that brought on much self discovery, I'm learning about all the not so amazing capabilities I possess in addition to the good ones. In these discoveries it is really fun how often I'm reminded of things my dad would say to me and how true they were. This is the best test of how much someone loves you- if they know all of your flaws and strengths and are not afraid to point them out. He used to always tell me how fickle I was and recently I'm reminded of how true this is. Summertime especially reminds me of this. There is something about summer that makes me restless. It makes me want to explore new waters, but most of all it makes me miss people. Summer is a time when stress levels are generally relieved, especially for the educated, but this summer, I'm experiencing quite the opposite. I'm yearning for summers past, or more importantly people from summers past. With every rising temperature, the heat brings back vivid memories. The most vivid memories from the last two summers of my life. The most monumental summers of my life. Not all these memories are happy, these summers contained the most heartbreaking times in my life, but they contain pieces of my soul, they are intricately connected to who I am today.

With these feelings surfacing as the temperatures rise, I'm filled with wonderment about what this summer will have in store. the magic of summer has already begun to twist around my life as I begin to mold the next steps of my journey.