The end of the summer.

I missed again posting on time. This should have been for yesterday. Fridays are a great day for rants and musings. No, the summer hasn’t ended yet. In fact, I’m not even sure if spring hasn’t even started. But I don’t want to talk again about the weather. What I mean is that feeling of sudden realization of the end of something good, and how that triggers a change in some behaviours. It is something that always comes to my mind. I will always remember having this feeling in some summers during my teenage days. What is curious is that I can recognize when this is happening. Then it is like if something pulls me out telling me, hey, your time is ending! Hurry up!

The question that immediately appears is: hurry up, for what? And why my time is ending? I’ll explain this better with an example. It is something that I’m sure everybody has lived at some point in their lives. I’ll go back to that summer holidays, when you were a teenager. You arrive to a new place, with your family. That place is familiar, because maybe  you have spent the last few summers already there. Maybe even it is starting to get boring. It is not the first time you go there, and you would like that next summer was in another place, just for a change. Of course, you don’t have friends there. Each summer, you only manage to meet a few people, teenagers in the same situation as you, that who knows if you will see any other time in your life. Precisely because of that, you don’t try it too hard to find friends or engage with them. You just don’t want to get attached to anyone, just in case. Just in case of what? Well, when you are a teenager, you can find loads of answers for that question. And the thing gets much worse if you are a bit introverted. So you  spend most of your summer doing nothing. You shouldn’t do nothing anyway! You are on holidays! Yes, that’s true. What I mean is, somehow not enjoying it too much those holidays. Not having all the fun you could have had. You think, I don’t care, I will come here next year. Also, because you are having such a boring holiday, you are all the day complaining. Complaining to your parents because you don’t like the place. Complaining to your summer friends because you think the place is boring. Even complaining to yourself, because you think you deserve something better and you hope for the next holiday to be much better.

Summer gets to its end, maybe in a few weeks, and then your parents say: We wont come here again. We are going to move to another country. Things will be better there. Maybe that’s what they say to you, but actually, what it could be happening is just that there are some economic issues at home, say your father has lost his job, or something like that. Your parents wont tell you that, they don’t want to worry you too much. They know that you already worry too much for everything, so better leave that way. What happens next is a very interesting thing. You try hard to enjoy the last days as if it was the end of the world, your last night on earth. You know you may not see these people any time soon, maybe never again. You talk to everyone. You tell things to people you could never thought you were going to be able to tell. Every hour is precious. And all that, feels weird and great at the same time. It feels weird because you realize how much of your precious time you have wasted. And you notice that this sudden extraversion phase is not natural in you although it is great, because you feel more connected, more engaged to people. At the same time, you realize about how absurd all your complains were. So much whining and moaning.

And this has happened to me lots of times. Apart from lots of summers. In recent years, it has happened when I have decided to move to another place with my family. Or when I decided to change job. Or even at some late Saturday nights. Only at the end I have found that I enjoy the most of it. And now, I’m feeling the same. I think the end of something is coming, and I might be starting to already miss it. We’ll see.