Guest Blog: SUMMER ME by Sarah Ockler

Today we have Sarah Ockler guest posting for us about her "Summer Me" persona that would emerge every summer at the beach. For more information about Sarah and her writing, check out her website!

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When I was a teen, summer was the season for reinventing. A time for leaving behind the usual for an entirely new place where no one knew whether I was popular or geeky or smart or funny or athletic or outgoing or just the quiet girl who sat alone at lunch. The boys at the beach… well, they were summer boys who only got to see the Summer Me. And the Summer Me, away from the limitations and judgments and responsibilities of home, was more confident, more vibrant, more alive, and definitely more prone to falling in love than the usual me. Near the ocean, I became enamored, pulled under the spell of every summer thing from the boys splashing in the water to the shine of the moon dripping its pale glow into the sea.

Summer. An intoxicating slow-brew of heat and light and cocoa butter and music and waves and sticky-sweet ice cream sliding down your chin. Tangy ocean air. A cherry popsicle-cooled kiss. Warm whispers like a breeze against the soft hairs on your skin. In summer, nature sets us up for love, dropping us right on its doorstep, leaning in close for that first kiss. I love that time of year. I love the amplified possibilities, all of the promises made and broken, all of the spells cast, all of the secrets shared under the blanket of a thousand stars.

But before long, the sun blazes across the sky and burns out. Nights get cooler; the space between the darkness shorter. Fall nears. We watch it creep to the edge of things and know that soon, we’ll be back home, back in school, sitting side by side with the expected and the planned and the already-decided. We’ll sigh as we tuck our beach towels and flip-flops and secrets under the bed, trading them for our sweaters and winter boots, bracing for the cold, hoping that the memory of that stolen summer kiss is enough to warm us until the sun shines high in the sky once again. Summer Me remembers this part well. It was a goodbye of sorts; a storing of fortification for the long winter months ahead.

I'm no longer in school, so the passage of time for me isn't marked by the countdown to summer. And I finally figured out that I don't need to reinvent myself just to fall in love with everything around me. But there's still something about summer that just completely intoxicates me, and now, all these years later, a single whiff of suntan lotion or the lone cry of a seagull will bring me right back there, right back to the beach, right back to the sea and that annual start of endless possibilities.

It always makes me smile.

So for all of the “Summer Mes” still out there, counting down the final hours until exams are over and school is out, holding your breath until you can kick off your shoes and go barefoot, I wish you a summer filled with things that make you the best kind of dizzy. Here’s to the warmth of the sun on your bare skin, the sand between your toes, the breeze against your shoulders, and all of that seductive, sweet but fleeting in-loveness that summer promises!