Waiting for what hasn’t been
I’m gonna keep on dancing
It’s the 15th of July. I don’t remember the last time I saw the sun. I look out of the window into the evening as rain lashes down heavy onto cars, rooftops and the street. It could be November, is what I turned and said to my friend. I’m nervous about how I’ll feel this year when winter comes creeping in. The longing and waiting for a period of consistent dry weather and blue skies has yet to materialise and the days are only getting shorter from here on out. If it never comes, I worry about how my mental health will fare. I want to be lying out on a scorched piece of grass streaked of all its colour; reading books and basking in the sun.
I am nostalgic for something I haven’t even experienced yet. But I am such a visual thinker that it looks so real to me all the same. Watching all my imagined sunny experiences slip through my fingers, like grains of sand from an hourglass and I can’t stop it. Equally I’m nostalgic for childhood summers. There is a specific smell of a factor 50 suncream which embodies these memories for me. It was purple and I think it was shaped like a gluestick, making it easier for me to apply myself as a child at school in the playground. I ache for the thought of an upcoming 6 weeks off stretching out in front of me, back when 6 weeks felt like a lifetime. The older we get, our perspective on what a year is changes. When we’re tiny at 4 years old, a year is a quarter of our whole lives. As we age years roll by and time appears to speed up. Summer slipping through our fingers.
The 15th of July is St Swithin’s Day. It’s said that if it rains on this day, it’ll rain for the next 40 days - soaking nearly all of what’s left of summer. A bishop who lived in medieval England, St Swithin wished to be buried outside in the graveyard “where the sweet rain of heaven may fall upon [his] grave”. Years later when he was moved inside the cathedral, a storm supposedly hit that latest for 40 days, it was said to be St Swithin ensuring his outrage was known. The forecast isn’t looking great.
I read
’s Substack earlier this week and it included a Georgia O’Keeffe quote “I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.” I am starting to fear the same. I am waiting. Waiting for the sun, waiting for something. So it goes that comparison is the thief of joy and comparing this summer to others gone by is making me feel cross and grumpy.I have perfection paralysis. I wait for the exact right context, the optimum elements for me to thrive in. It seeps into all areas of my life. To enjoy summer, ergo, means to have the constant sunshine and flawless blue skies. It’s black and white. Perfect paralysis paired with a compounding feeling of running out of time can sometimes make it debilitating to enjoy the moment for what it is.
It was sunny and I sat in the park today. I went for an outdoor swim in the lido. I cycled to dinner. I vowed to myself earlier in the week that if the summer comes out, I have to be in it (considering how much I’ve been moaning about its absence). But if I continue to live by the arbitrary rules I set myself, like when it’s acceptable for me to enjoy summer, I risk living perpetually in the state of waiting. I don’t want to live like that. I am continually relearning and rewiring my way of thinking. I am a work in progress. I will try to embrace every second remaining of summer, rain and all.
We’re back, baby. I’ve missed doing some little offcuts for you all. Notable mentions of little random thoughts and other influences that didn’t make it into the newsletter. It’s been 9 months since I last posted an Offcut and I don’t think right now I want to commit to publishing a whole piece on it weekly again but you never know. Did you enjoy it last time? Would you want to see more of it again? Tell me!!!
Offcut of this week has to be Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan. I can’t stop listening to it. It’s fun to find songs written by female pop artists that aren’t all about love and heartbreak. We’re flooded with so many it sometimes makes my eye roll into the back of my head. The song is essentially a southern girl dreaming of dancing within the safe acceptance of a drag club. More of that please.