Summer Anxiety
Sarasota, Florida
In the car after the beach at sunset
I have a recurring dream that I am late to maths class. The bell has rung, and there are swarms of students moving with purpose around me. I don’t know where I am, or where I am supposed to be. As I search for the classroom, a panic builds about homework I didn’t do that I vaguely suspect is due. I stumble around hallways lined with identical grey silver lockers and start to cry. I’m late and painfully underprepared, lagging so far behind that I will never be able to catch up.
The thing about maths is that your ability to understand certain concepts is predicated on understanding the ones that came before it. The complexity increases as you progress, and if you fail to understand one thing, it rolls into the next, becoming a roadblock.
At some point in maths class, I didn’t understand a concept being taught, and the class moved on before I could figure it out. Everything from that moment forwards was incomprehensible. I was held up by this one thing and I was too embarrassed to ask for help. Instead, I played phone games underneath the desk in the back left corner as Mr. Dimopolous filled the chalkboard with numbers and symbols, total gibberish to me. I would avoid his gaze when he handed back the tests that I failed, shoving them in my backpack before anybody could see.
Once I was left behind, there was no way for me to catch up. Being shit at maths led to the belief that I maybe I was just a dummy, something that persisted well into my adulthood until the last couple of years after having freedom to actually wholeheartedly choose what I want to learn. Learning to drive was a similar feeling: here was something that a majority of adults seemed to be able to do, something I couldn’t, and maybe would never be able to.
Adulthood sometimes feels much like learning maths in high school. There is an urgency to keep up. To pause for a moment is to be left behind. Everyone else has already moved forward, is continuing to move forward, their retreating backs only barely visible in the dust that has been kicked up behind them. We are always somehow behind.
Once I was left behind, there was no way for me to catch up. Being shit at maths led to the belief that I maybe I was just a dummy, something that persisted well into my adulthood until the last couple of years after having freedom to actually wholeheartedly choose what I want to learn. Learning to drive was a similar feeling: here was something that a majority of adults seemed to be able to do, something I couldn’t, and maybe would never be able to.
Adulthood sometimes feels much like learning maths in high school. There is an urgency to keep up. To pause for a moment is to be left behind. Everyone else has already moved forward, is continuing to move forward, their retreating backs only barely visible in the dust that has been kicked up behind them. We are always somehow behind.
I, and my many of my friends, are entering our thirties, the hallowed grounds of adulthood. We have less money that we expected, we’re single when we thought we’d have children by now. Our careers are less fulfilling, years of effort fizzling into an itchy feeling, or we’re standing at the precipice of big changes; going back to school, starting new and more senior jobs, starting and finishing large bodies of work. The rents are higher, the government trending the wrong direction, the prospect of home ownership more remote. Often, I lie in bed at night and count the things I did that day as evidence to myself that I am fulfilling my role as a person engaged with life to the highest degree. Nothing is too insignificant for this list of achievements: I watered the plants, I had three calls, I meditated, I read, I wrote, I worked out, I washed my hair, I cooked two meals for myself. I mutter these things under my breath, offering them to some higher being as a bargaining chip for rest that I feel as though I have earned.
My ex of eight years recently got engaged, a piece of news I found out about when I was walking my dog around the same park we’ve walked around thousands of times before. His engagement was just one in a long chorus that seems to be growing in volume the older I get. It is among other accomplishments that you can point to, make Instagram posts about: promotions, new homes, moving countries, reproducing. All Summer, I have been restless, uneasy, unable to identify what exactly is wrong, only that I am not progressing in the way that I feel as though I am supposed to.
My ex of eight years recently got engaged, a piece of news I found out about when I was walking my dog around the same park we’ve walked around thousands of times before. His engagement was just one in a long chorus that seems to be growing in volume the older I get. It is among other accomplishments that you can point to, make Instagram posts about: promotions, new homes, moving countries, reproducing. All Summer, I have been restless, uneasy, unable to identify what exactly is wrong, only that I am not progressing in the way that I feel as though I am supposed to.
I have been somewhat unhappily distracted by any opportunity to indulge: hours in the park in the middle of the day reading on a bench, last-minute glasses of wine that go on for longer than they should. Each night collapsing in bed exhausted, guilty that I didn’t write, didn’t meditate, didn’t read as much as I wanted to. When I am unable to list all these offerings that I use to reassure myself I have done enough, it’s evidence that I am falling behind in all the big ways, and now, all the small ways, too.
I litigated this with my therapist. I worried that I was wasting my potential, that I am too good at having fun. She looked at me and said, “Maybe you’re just enjoying Summer.”
She kind of ate. Now that Summer is officially Over, I feel suddenly fine again. After that therapy session, the one where I paid my therapist $150 to tell me I was simply Enjoying Summer, Cody and I went to Sarasota (Florida) for his birthday.
I worked for an hour or two in the morning and didn’t bother tomeditate, or write, or work that much. I forgot to count my accomplishment offerings at night, I simply just fell asleep. We went to thrift stores, ate simple meals, floated in the warm ocean and watched movies in the air conditioned Airbnb. Life was narrowed to the hot sand burning the soles of my feet, getting comfortable on the squeaky leather couch, trying to agree with Cody on what time we should get to the beach to play frisbee. I finally stopped feeling like there was something I was supposed to be doing, if only I could just figure out what it was.
One of my favorite things when we go to Florida is sieving for shark’s teeth at this prehistoric looking beach called Caspersen’s. It’s fully exposed. The wind and the sun feels especially harsh here. The water is choppy, often cold. This time, it was lukewarm. The road to the parking lot had eroded into pieces of cookie into the sand dunes, and we had to walk through it. It was about a fifteen minute walk in the midday sun, the type of additional walk you need to account for in your mental expectations for the day.
Usually, there are dozens of other people up to their knees in the ocean, carrying shovels of sand and beach debris from the ocean onto the shore, sifting through them to look for the dark, triangular teeth that washes up to this specific beach. The whole thing looks like a mining operation. This time, maybe because of the cookie dust road, there were much fewer people on the beach. We lowered our butts into the warm ocean, lowering and raising our sieves from the bottom of the seabed. I was trying to practice my ability to spot the sharks teeth among the 1000 other colorful and dark little pieces of ocean that I had scooped up. Cody always seems to find them, even the smallest ones, the sliver of a tooth broken off from some probably dead shark.
I could not get my hair to stay in my ponytail. It kept whipping around my face and into my mouth. I was sweaty and dirty, coated in a fine layer of dark sand, vaguely thirsty. I would get into short bouts of intense focus looking for teeth and then lie back on my towel and reading my book. Heavy rain clouds rolled in after a few hours, the sound of thunder in the far off distance. We set off back to the car, not wanting to get caught in the rain. I washed sand off my body underneath the public shower, my foot pressed down on a metal pedal to keep the water on. On our drive back to the Airbnb, we sang along to whatever we could find on the radio, too lazy to connect the bluetooth. I can drive well now, but I’m a passenger princess in Sarasota.
Usually, there are dozens of other people up to their knees in the ocean, carrying shovels of sand and beach debris from the ocean onto the shore, sifting through them to look for the dark, triangular teeth that washes up to this specific beach. The whole thing looks like a mining operation. This time, maybe because of the cookie dust road, there were much fewer people on the beach. We lowered our butts into the warm ocean, lowering and raising our sieves from the bottom of the seabed. I was trying to practice my ability to spot the sharks teeth among the 1000 other colorful and dark little pieces of ocean that I had scooped up. Cody always seems to find them, even the smallest ones, the sliver of a tooth broken off from some probably dead shark.
I could not get my hair to stay in my ponytail. It kept whipping around my face and into my mouth. I was sweaty and dirty, coated in a fine layer of dark sand, vaguely thirsty. I would get into short bouts of intense focus looking for teeth and then lie back on my towel and reading my book. Heavy rain clouds rolled in after a few hours, the sound of thunder in the far off distance. We set off back to the car, not wanting to get caught in the rain. I washed sand off my body underneath the public shower, my foot pressed down on a metal pedal to keep the water on. On our drive back to the Airbnb, we sang along to whatever we could find on the radio, too lazy to connect the bluetooth. I can drive well now, but I’m a passenger princess in Sarasota.