That Summer Feeling

by Bridget Morrissey

She reminded me of the sun, not just because of her bright hair and beaming smile, but the way she pulled you into her orbit.

I felt her absence like hunger, a dull ache in my belly that grew with time,

I’d started doubting my memory of her face. I needed to look at her longer so I could never lose track of her again.

She still smelled like a cherished memory. Like I’d known her all my life, but somehow I’d forgotten her until today.

We danced side by side, beaming under the disco lights, having too much fun to worry about anyone else in the room. There was only her and me. The whole moment was so joyful I felt wild with it. No matter how old I got, I could always find new ways to be young again.

I watched the way the light caught Stevie. Disco-ball prisms sparkled like jewels against her glistening skin. She made me afraid to blink, because to miss even a single second was to miss something revelatory. I would dance with her until the music stopped. Even then, if she wanted to keep going, I’d create music for us.

I didn’t like her freckles because they were cute. I liked them because they were hers, and I liked every single thing about her, and in fact I’d spent two days straight thinking of only her, and oh god, I had never felt less prepared to continue existing, because the framing of my entire world had changed in a millisecond. She was so delicate, so precious and fragile, and I was the one holding her, not knowing exactly how much care I needed to take until it was too late.

That was not how any rational adult with a crush behaved. Adults didn’t even have crushes. They had attractions. Sensations. Arousals? Something way more sophisticated than me, heartsick and overwhelmed, obsessing over the woman sleeping a baseball bat’s length away from me.

She left the room before I could decide, and a boulder of my anxiety walked out with her. For the first time in hours, I could breathe. Then a heaping dose of longing moved right into the vacancy. I missed her already. Crushes—or attractions, or sensations, or arousals, or whatever—did not get any easier with age. If anything, I felt even less prepared for the revelation that I liked Stevie than I would have been in seventh grade. I thought I knew everything there was to know about myself, when in reality I’d been ignoring my own truth in favor of keeping things from getting too complicated. Now it had all come crashing down on me, and I was thirty-two years old and I had a crush on a woman at summer camp, and it seemed like the most intense thing to ever happen in my entire life.

when I imagined hands on me, they were a woman’s. When I saw myself struggling and I pictured the shoulder I would most want to cry on, it was a woman’s. When I asked myself who I liked to travel with, or who took the best pictures of me, or who made experiences the most fun, it was a woman. I’d tricked myself into thinking that meant friendship, because sometimes it did. But I’d spent my whole life muting the part of myself that wanted more from women. Now that part of me was screaming, a speaker turned up so high the sound almost hurt—wild and sharp and very, very loud.

“For me, it’s always when I’m in a place without them,” she said. “If I notice that they’re gone, or I miss what they’d add to something. That’s usually when I realize I’m in trouble. Even if I see someone at a party who I think is cute, and they leave before I get a chance to know them, I’m like, ‘Damn.’ Basically, I have to lose you to realize I want you around.”

The second I’d met Stevie, I’d spent the rest of the time looking for ways to be around her. Hating every moment I wasn’t. She snuck into my heart unannounced and staked a claim to land I didn’t realize was up for grabs. I swore I’d closed myself off, and she’d found a broken gate and walked right through, not even bothering to announce herself.

There were always other roads available. It didn’t matter if I never took them. They existed. They were real. I was real. I liked men. And women. Anyone, really. And I hadn’t let myself hold space for it, because I’d been so obsessed with ticking off boxes for the life I thought I needed to have that I didn’t pay much attention to the life I wanted to have.

“Knowing myself is fucking complicated.” She laughed heartily at that. “Tell me about it.” “It’s scary, taking risks.” “It doesn’t really get easier either.” “Probably because the older we get, the more we realize just how much opportunity there is to fail,” I said. “But there’s also so much life we miss out on when we hold ourselves back,” she responded. “You can never get those moments back. The best you can do is be truer to yourself going forward.”

I’d always thought I needed to earn my place in order to be accepted. Turned out, existing was the only thing required in earning my authentic life. Hour by hour, with the help of friends and crushes alike, I was remembering how to do that. To really exist. Not just survive. To be myself in all my completion. And I liked who I was becoming.

I was too busy processing the earthshaking revelation that I was downright obsessed with her and hadn’t previously realized why. Now I feared the worst. I’d pushed her away right when I figured out it was the last thing I ever wanted to do.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed my own feelings toward her before now. She sucked the air out of my lungs. She made me want to do random things like sing.

The two of us were fixed on each other, an exchange of dares between our gazes. Who was I to her? Who was she to me?

“Stevie,” I whispered, her name a secret for the stars to unravel.

I didn’t have to move like the universe was keeping score of my generosity at every single moment. I could do the reckless thing intentionally. I could do it with purpose.

“There’s a thing a lot of people say about women when they date other women,” she continued. “I’m sure you’ve heard it. We fall in love too fast. We rent the U-Haul and move in together after a week. And that’s always annoyed me, even though to be perfectly honest, it’s happened to more than one of my friends. I still thought it was a boring generalization and that people lacked imagination. Until I met you.” She laughed, remembering. “I saw you and thought, Oh yes. Wherever she asked me to go, I’d follow.

“Even at thirty-two. You are not required by law to understand a single fucking thing about yourself, despite what everyone might want to tell you.”

That’s how well they fit. We were meant to hold each other, telling secrets to each other at summer camp.

In a way, my old habit of romanticizing life was one of the only kindnesses I’d granted myself, because it was the only time I allowed myself to believe I deserved a love full of care. I didn’t need to shut that out anymore. I needed to lean in harder, because it was a gift to be able to not just see the good in the world but embrace it.

It was addicting, watching Stevie marvel at me. She made taking risks worth it.

Get used to me, I thought. Be as desperate for my touch as I am for yours.

Signs didn’t just exist to tell me where to go. Sometimes signs reminded me of what I needed to avoid.

I know now that I’ve always felt like too much around you. And I don’t want to feel that way anymore. I want to feel like I’m just enough.”

“I said nothing is definitive. You’re not a friendless hack. Or any of the unkind things you think about yourself. All of that passes. It always does. The best gift you can give yourself is permission to keep figuring shit out, no matter how messy it is. You can be a different you tomorrow. You can also own the person you are today. You don’t have to hide away because you might one day change.”

What was love if not holding someone else’s hand through their chosen journeys? Our ups and downs didn’t have to match to matter. I never wanted to be Ethan asking Why do you care so much? It was enough to know she did. It would always be enough.

When would I learn how to make myself into a person who didn’t cause trouble by feeling too much? Life didn’t come with a guidebook, or a checklist, or a set of accomplishments that had to be fulfilled to succeed. I got to determine what success looked like for myself.

She made the hard things better. She made the scary things fun. Could she not see all the ways she’d touched me? Every inch of my skin had already been covered in her, long before she’d ever put her mouth over it.

“I used to spend a lot of time imagining my future,” I told her. “I’d make up little scenarios with people as soon as I met them. What would we eat for lunch on a rainy day? If we went to Disneyland together, what ride would we go on first? That kind of thing. I loved to do it. It made me believe that I could one day have so much more than I did.

“It’s the weirdest thing. You’re the first person who has ever made me appreciate the present for what it is. You remind me to be here, in the now.

I didn’t need to judge my own actions so harshly, or think that I owed everyone in the world the most complete version of my kindness in order to be worthy of good things. I did not need my fear. Maybe of heights. I could keep it a little bit. I didn’t need my fear of control. Letting go was the best part. All good things had happened to me when I stopped trying to make them the most perfect version of a moment. I did not need any last shred of belief that there was any sort of rule book for life that I had to follow. Messy was good. Messy could stay. And romance could stay. I could have my big heart and my dramatic ideas. I could dress like a kid and still be an adult. I could be young in my heart no matter my age.

It was so beautiful to tell people I loved them and not worry about sounding too intense.