I have a love-hate relationship with August.
Love: It usually gets warmest in August. This means sparkly mornings that smell like sweet dew and flowers and that are filled with the cooing of morning doves. This also means warm nights with the windows open and the fans on and the crickets to sing me to sleep. I love all the good things that summer has saved for last, like last minute vacations. I love that August is, for the most part, still summer.
Hate: When August ends, so does summer. And I want to cry just looking at that sentence.
Summer is the best time of year. Every bad thing from September to April can be fixed with May to August. It is carefree, spontaneous, giggly, open, honest, real, warm, gentle, and just so...golden.
Summer is perfect. Even when it isn't.
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A year and a month ago, my life was as close to perfect as I could dream up. For so many reasons. In fact, perfect was so prefect that a part of me absolutely knew it was going to end soon. I could feel it. It had to. Part of me was right.
The car crash was first. It was the marble that started the domino tumble. I still think about it. Almost everyday. I remember the moment I realized impact was unavoidable, that the other car wasn't going to stop the way I thought it would...that I wasn't going to keep going the way I thought I would. Next, I remember turning. Only I wasn't turning anything. I was being turned without my permission. Turned in a direction I didn't really want to be going, until finally, I hit the wall and stopped. Somewhere in all that I screamed. Just once. Quietly. Not so much a scream as a cry. I cried out to no one in the moment when my life stopped being in my hands any more. Later, I walked away with a few insignificant scratches, a useless car, and a broken perfect.
The rest of the fall is harder to pin point, a jumble of lots of things. Lots of sad things. Things that should have been expected. Things I never saw coming (because I wouldn't look). Things that broke my heart. Things that made me stronger. Things I may not recognize or appreciate for a very long time. Not even until heaven. Things I can't really talk about. Not even with myself.
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Summer as I live it now is not the perfect as I lived it then. I kept going. So did life. Some things are better. Some are still kicking my trash. It's a process. I feel older now. Not the older you feel the first time you go for a drive by yourself just because you can. This is the kind of older that comes from dealing with things far beyond your maturity level. The kind of older you swear you'll never let your kids feel because, to be honest, it's scary as hell.
I don't why it's happening to me now. I don't know why it refuses to end. I've sort of just stopped worrying about that part. For a year I have been stuck in that moment where my life got taken out of my hands and spun out of my control. The moment where I cried out to no one. But it wasn't to no one. God knows. He heard me the first time and every time since. My life may not be in my control but that doesn't mean it's out of control. He knows why this is happening, and that's good enough for me. I trust him. Really. I do. Even though I kind of desperately wish He'd hurry up and bring perfect back to visit for a while. I need a vacation. And I like to drive. Until then I'll try to enjoy watching from the passenger's seat.
Everything is going to be okay. Everything is under control.
