the july dread

it's okay if your summer sucks

You’re guaranteed weird stares if you confess July is your least favorite month of the year. I have nothing to say in my defense, really, besides that I don’t do well in temperatures above 77 and I’ve never had an easy July. Coincidentally or cosmically, it continues to be my payback month for all the good things that happen throughout the year. It sure doesn’t help that it’s the time of year where half of your acquaintances are in Santorini, the others are eating their way through the Amalfi coast, it’s open toe sandal ugly denim shorts boyfriend season, and the ever-increasing heatwaves can turn the most rational of thoughts into pathetic little spirals. What do you do when your summers just aren’t ever sexy or noble?

2024

It’s July 1st, and I’m stuck in an excruciatingly dystopian six hour long border queue to get into Russia: there are no direct flights from Europe anymore, so you have to drive in from the neighboring countries. As I’m standing there, I realize I’m going to have a field day relaying this highly unrelatable, absurdly niche scenario to my first world passport friends. The border control is a confined, Orwellian space that hasn’t been renovated since what feels like the soviet days; ugly overhead lights and suffocating surveillance, scary faces in uniforms whose only job is to interrogate and make you tiptoe around them. What am I doing here in my vintage athleisure, for god’s sake. Everyone in line is annoyed and exhausted: divided by different walks of life and nationalities, yet united by more or less the same ache — having strong familial ties to a country that successfully isolated itself from the world around it. It’s all shitty and grotesque, a little ridiculous, and I wish I was somebody else right now. But I am me, and the cards I’ve been dealt are only mine to play. I promised to be home for my brother’s birthday. Let’s keep the political discourse at bay: I grew up here, and after a couple years of hiding my passport and dodging the ‘Where are you from’ questions everywhere I go, I realized there was no need to bend backwards. If I have to hide my heritage to please the chronic virtue signalers with just the right non-offensive neoliberal views imposed by the perfectly western, perfectly selective democracy that doesn’t, you know, allow for nuance (all russians BAD! they all endorse war!), these are not the kind of people I should be trying to impress. I’m way past the point of caring to explain myself to those whose political understanding is shaped by Instagram infographics.

I’m craving connection, even in the most dire of circumstances, but everyone around me is sleepy and irritated, and it’s not the time or place to make friends. As the queue moves ever so slowly and every minute of waiting feels like it’s being debited from my limited family time, I light a cigarette and strike up a conversation with a 30-something Latvian woman next to me who was thoughtful enough to offer me a bottle of water earlier. I hand her my Marlboros in exchange, letting her take as many as she needs. Barter economy, if you will. She looks just like Adèle Exarchopoulos, just a little more on the Slavic side, with sweat stains on her Lululemon shirt and baby hairs sticking out of her golden ponytail. She’s on her way to Moscow to see her husband, and they’ve been long distance for three years.

“Do you get to see him a lot? Like, with all this back and forth?”

“Well, I try. We don’t really have a choice right now. It’s hard.” — she takes a long drag and exhales loudly, so as to thank me for the tobacco salvation. One of the best things about our culture is that we don’t do small talk — we dive right into the trauma. I pout and nod politely.

We’re both stuck here, on neutral territory with one foot in the scary country, sacrificing convenience for a brief moment with our loved ones. I stare at the blue sky. The border control staff has the ugliest polyester and wool blend uniform. One of them keeps looking over at me, and it makes me nervous. I should be in a tiny skirt making out with strangers at the bar or sunbathing in Lake Como, not wondering if I’m getting detained in my birth country. Nothing about this is Instagram-worthy, and that’s okay. I allow myself to have a shitty summer.

2023

Last July, I was moving away from Paris, going through a rough antidepressant withdrawal, drinking almost every day, and looking for a new job. I was coming to terms with having to leave my tiny 17ème arrondissement studio, my established (albeit mostly fake) friend group, and my newfound Parisian identity because it just wasn’t working out for me. I tried so badly and ferociously to make my life effortlessly French, but it ended up being anything but effortless or French. I had kept it together for months and months as best as I could, but in July everything came crashing down. Giving up, to a perfectionist, is akin to being stabbed in the stomach repeatedly. This time, I was being stabbed with a baguette knife. I hung my head and let myself bleed out. Saying farewell to my brightest ambitions, I pacified my brain by hoping it was all for the best. I spent that July in limbo, wandering around with my head in the clouds, my ego in shambles, and my heart in the gutter. I knew I would have to start all over again, so I allowed myself to have a shitty summer.

2022

Two summers ago, my July was heartbreak purgatory. Having just earned my hookup-sold-to-me-as-a-romantic-trip hit and run survivor badge, I was spending some time in Belgium to lick my wounds and regain what was left of my sense of self, shattered to pieces by the deception cherry on top of my already hardest year ever cake. Even upon the intentions revealed, I begged and pleaded him to stay in my life, with desperation amidst chaos outweighing my dignity, so out of character for a girl like me I felt ashamed of the mess I’d let Just Some Guy turn me into. He never spoke to me again, vanishing from my life with no trace of his presence, smug enough to leave me stranded with a fever and in agony. For weeks, I would wake up in the middle of the night, delirious, with his radio silence metastasizing through my spine. Did any of it happen? I could’ve sworn I’d made the whole thing up. Pacing back and forth in my Brussels rental, unable to put my phone down in case he ever calls, playing Joni Mitchell’s Blue on repeat, restlessly noting things like Would it have killed you to be a friend? in my journal until I was tired enough to fall back asleep. My body felt brittle and used. He knew I was at my lowest — I just wanted to be seen.

Just as the gut punch was starting to subside and I could feel my resentment getting washed away by acceptance, somewhere mid-July I woke up to him having posted the pictures I took of him on our trip. No mention of me anywhere. My face wasn’t in there. I wasn’t worthy of a text or a call — but hey, at least my photos were good enough for a carousel. Likes from mutual friends who had no idea. My devotion, nothing but a wine stain on his conveniently curated life, vandalized. I was wilted by the kind of demented, tainted mix of indifference and calculated arrogance my heart couldn’t quite comprehend, let alone make peace with. I took a train to the nearest Belgian beach, even though laying on the train tracks was much more tempting in the moment. I had never in my life cried harder than I did that day. I lathered on SPF, swore I’d never let a man get my hopes up again, and allowed myself to have a shitty summer.

Life has a funny way of making you feel the opposite of what you’re supposed to be feeling. Usually by virtue of contrasts: scorching hot sun and misery. Long awaited vacation and existential dread. Serene stillness and melodramatic sinking. You can crawl out of your skin to try and live up to all the quintessential aspects of July — steamy summer romance, a fresh bikini wax, wired earphones and ripe peaches, wine and tanlines, club classics and forgetting what day it is or how many shots you had. Or, if your Julys are perpetually horrid like mine, you can surrender to the uglier parts of the season and take them for what they are. I strip it all down: the less I expect, the more space in my lungs to breathe. I sneak my way into happiness by practicing being content with the littlest of things. And if all else fails, remember that cherries are perfectly in season right now. You are not your circumstances — you are what you make of them. Have a bowl of fruit, do a little stretch in the morning, and allow yourself to have a shitty summer.