“Salt air, and the rust on your door…”
On July 31st, thousands of Swifties joked online to sprinkle salt on rusted nails and leave them at your door, and maybe Taylor Swift would pay a visit, like Santa Clause or something.
But for me, August is more than Leo season, or my birthday rolling around, or any of that. Right now, it’s a reminder that something that felt real has slipped away.
2023: I spend my birthday with a woman I met online visiting the butterfly garden. I love the butterfly garden, it’s one of my favorite places in the world. I take this woman, who tolerates bugs because I want to be there, to the butterfly garden. We go to dinner, and I spend an evening watching her watch a soccer match on her phone. A familiar lull is cast over an otherwise pleasant summer, wherein I look 6 years down the path to end up exactly where I was just a few months prior. It doesn’t shock me when I start singing along to a song on the radio that I’m questioned, and mention that my ex liked the song, I’m used to listening to it. The magic, whatever summer sweetness we’ve crafted, fades, and this little daliance slipped away, like a bottle of wine.
2024: “You have to just put yourself out there.” I do. I meet a woman for drinks. We share a god awful appetizer that we laugh about for weeks. We meet again, a week and a half later. I share some of my broken, she shares some of hers too. I laugh more than I’ve laughed in a long time. She’s considerate and kind, she is funny and smart, and is just enjoyable to be around. “Maybe this is it?” I think to myself. We plan for an evening. It’s cancelled and rescheduled. We plan for another evening. A last minute pause, a quiet, soft, fade to nothing. We had listened to “August” in the car the night before my birthday on repeat. But like the summer before, it was never mine.
So maybe third time is the charm. Maybe August next year will be different. But for now, I have been “August-ed” two years in a row. There’s no moral to this story. No lesson to be learned. Just a summation of stated events.
-M
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