It Hibernates in the Summer: The Aisle

It is that time of year again: When patriotic paraphernalia, think stars and stripes, mountain-mandated rope, prairie-peddling tents, and shining sea necessities like floaties and folding beach chairs – all coalesce into the aisle-du jour of your choice large store for miscellaneous basic human needs. It’s the aisle that rotates inventory almost weekly. This aisle is a rendition of the United Nations with a parity of faiths, depending on the season. Once the Easter bunnies hop on out, and Passover, well, passes and is over, this aisle remains a red, white, and blue hodgepodge of barbecue grills, coal, marshmallows, Hershey’s chocolate, graham crackers, suntan lotion, and beach buckets. The long-awaited shower to wipe off the sand will be when white goes out of style come Labor Day.

This marketing schematic was as bleak as a rainy day was when I was growing up. It was a time when mobile cellular phones were commodities afforded to the coming-of-age and I spent free time outdoors, visiting friends, dabbling in sports, and walking to the Library, deli, or any other place my feet would bring me to. My eyes clouded over once the aisle that turned over seemingly weekly remained at a standstill for months on end, no clear holiday in sight. The aisle became a direct contradiction to my favorite season. Summer: When schools closed, my hair and skin glowed golden, and I turned a year older a couple of weeks prior to the longest day of the year.

I found myself pining for September in advance of Easter this year. I find myself wanting to forget that the next two weeks are dedicated to my mother – her birthday and Mother’s Day because societal norms morally condone the power trip that has been on long before and after that window of time. I want to skip over the camping, beach-going, Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Independence Day trifecta of the country I love and call home. My spite for this time frame is not a matter of love. It hits deeper. It hits my mind, beyond my heart.

My pining for the post-Labor Day aisle goes as deep as the aroma from fallen pine needles of Christmas trees. Just like leaves, or rather needles turn over, so too does this aisle. It’s not so much change as it is a turnover. Think skin cells: they turnover quickly, shed off, but the genetic makeup remains unchanged. I seek solace in the familiarity of knowing what is to come. This is how I feel when I watch series that are off-air. In contrast, the discontent I feel with the summer aisle is akin to the first few episodes of reality televised competitions and having to familiarize myself with the contestants.

I do not take pleasure in the earlier sunsets, as I mentioned in my last essay, and would rather see the sunshine-ombre color scheme reflected only in candy corn. I would rather the aisle shift into back-to-school mode. Like a true New Yorker fashion, I opt for the tonal black and white color scheme found in composition books. When the pandemic caused schools to shutter, however, the start of my favorite aisle became nonexistent. The aisle seemed to go out of business, per se, not unlike the number of stores that already shuttered post-pandemic, during which profits were being made almost exclusively online so that overhead costs were an unnecessary burden.

This shift was similar to print publications’ premature eulogy. Keep in mind that despite some publications no longer going to press, many more magazines not only reappeared but also came to fruition. One thing is for certain, we’re all still human, and the ability to use our senses, like touching – turning over a page – is a basic necessity. 

As tears are shed, consolation calms, and houses of worship are locked, I find myself wanting to extend my arms in an embrace, longing for human touch. Today, however, I felt oddly inhuman, and not due to the pandemic. I was numb. I am numb, though I believe it is wearing off. Numbness disrupts the body’s signaling something wrong. It hinders one from seeking out the remedy necessary to offset pain. This was something I experienced at my lowest weight. This numbness was total- mind, body, soul sucking.

At the time, I also experienced a physical numbness caused by low body weight such that I would take boiling hot showers and almost sit inside the fireplace without feeling any warmth until well after anyone else would jump away in time to escape a stinging burn. Even when I had begun to feel the warmth creeping, searing into my skin, I would gingerly edge away instead of jump. I felt a slow burn. The type I imagine a libido provides – one that I lack still, hormones off kilter, and without a period for over seven years now. 

The odd thing about numbness is that it is almost intolerable. Going to the dentist and having him apply Novocain would make speaking, eating, showing face, looking in the mirror, implausible. It made one drool and drawl. And so, I never did find truth in mental health professionals’ explanations about self-destructive behaviors, like not eating and over-exercising, being used as coping mechanisms to avoid sitting with feelings. Hell, I wanted to feel. I want for hunger, for the relief in vacating my bowels- something that is painfully slow. And it dawns on me, as I type this out, that I could not tolerate sitting it out.

Sitting it out from dance practice in college before our annual show because I had sprained my ankle in an attempt at outperforming the girl next to me on the treadmill who I never cared for, caused me to spend hours feeling unproductive and remorse at the temporary high I felt in “beating” her. She went onto another Ivy League, like myself, but she has a steady job post-medical school, married her college sweetheart, and is living a blissful life while I remain the unemployed writer, artist, single, and existing with an eating disorder. I suppose this absence of fulfilling expectations, the starving artist as my placeholder in lieu of marital status, is my attempt at not sitting with the feelings. 

The summer days are long. The heat manifests in ways unforeseen before now. Before the eating disorder ever existed, I indulged in the warmth of the sun, welcomed my browning skin at odds with my mother’s western one that turns rose pink instead of tan. I longed for the brown highlights in my hair, all the strands of which are now a light brown, lighter than they were in all of my youth, an oddity that still disturbs me. Now, however, the heat exacerbates the sweats I feel at all times due to my body’s inability to regulate temperature accordingly as a result of malnourishment and inconsistent energy intake. Last summer, in the throes of the pandemic, I struggled with the lengthier days, more time to sit it out until I couldn’t any longer. In the early morning, I would sweat it out in the basement absent of air circulation, and then I would sweat it out again, walking for an hour at minimum, later in the day.

In the way that I have made amends with spring and Daylight Savings this year, a goal of mine, I want to make it a goal to reclaim summer, perhaps not to celebrate anything but the present, day to day witnessing of the earth’s rotation. Going down the aisle can provide me with challenges - productivity, defined. I can challenge myself to enjoying grilled food, the prospect of hosting a smore’s soiree, to reminding myself that my days of playing wiffle ball are not to be mourned. So let it be known.