One fun fact about me is that I absolutely despise summer.
I hate the way the heat leaves my skin feeling sticky and how the air feels so thick it’s hard to breathe. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know where my hatred for hot weather came from. I was a pretty big fan of summertime when I was much younger, loving the way that the sun beat down on my skin like a warm embrace and the way that everyday was filled with joy and excessive indulgence of ice cream. I guess I eventually just grew out of it, like most people do with things they used to like.
I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand why people love summer or hot weather so much. When it’s hot out, everything feels miserable. I can’t put lotion or sunscreen on my face without having it feel greasy and melting off the minute I walk outside, and I can’t enjoy the comfort of baggy sweatpants and hoodies unless I plan on getting a heat stroke. Even the idea of summer bothers me like no other.
With hot weather comes plenty of struggles. You sweat more often, the sun burns your scalp, and most importantly, trying to fall asleep seems like the biggest challenge in the world (in my opinion). My nights consist of tossing and turning, giving up, watching TV, then trying to go back to sleep, failing, then repeating the whole process all over again. Every time summer rolls around I have to mentally prepare myself for the loss of sleep that I will be experiencing due to the heat and deal with the fact that my eye bags will eventually be taking over half of my face in the process. I honestly don’t know anyone who enjoys sleeping in the summer and if you do, I don’t really know what to say. I’m baffled.
Something even more upsetting is the fact that once summer comes along, the bugs also come. I will never fall in love with the idea of having strange 6 legged monstrosities crawl through the windows and cracks and flop around on the ceiling or lurk in the shadows. Perhaps it is to try and catch my attention. Maybe they want to be friends, or maybe they’re taunting me. But all I can do at that moment is think of all the hundreds of different scenarios in which I can smack them with my little bug swatter so I can peacefully go back to being miserable 
in the heat. Similarly, I will never find joy in the idea of mosquitoes flying around buzzing in my ear trying to suck the blood out of me like greedy little thieves and leaving itchy, bumpy spots all over my legs. If there’s one thing that I’m absolutely terrible at, it’s controlling the urge to scratch the bites until I’m satisfied. The randomly scattered pale scars on my legs are testimony to my itchy suffering.
The only good thing that comes with summer is the fact that we get summer break, but even that isn’t really all that exciting to me anymore. My summers always seem bleak, everyday consisting of staying in the house studying, lying around watching TV, or taking random naps. Everyday seems like clockwork, constantly doing the same things over and over and over. Occasionally I might go out with a friend or two, but even that is quite rare because I can never fully enjoy going out due to the heat.
Summer brings me a whole bunch of unnecessary stress and as much as I try to like it, I don’t think I ever could. I’d much rather just stay indoors until October rolls around, when the leaves are falling off the trees and the air is filled with promises of cold temperatures (and no bugs).
Jessica,
While I do not fully agree with you on your summer outlook, I did enjoy reading about them. For me, what you feel almost every day of summer is like a once-a-week kind of thing. I thoroughly enjoy the days I spend out at my grandma’s lake house in Indiana and I know no other season can enable that. I also love the way a nice 80-degree-day with some clouds in the sky can brighten up my mood. On the other hand, I can completely understand where you are coming from. I am not a fan of sleeping in the heat. Nothing beats a nice autumn night with the windows open underneath a couple different blankets with some candles burning (of course not while I am sleeping). I also hear you on our point about the sticky feeling you get. For someone who sweats a good amount (sorry if this is TMI), the heat does no good. Especially when we go back to school (I know this is not exactly summer, but more just speaking of the hot weather), and the classrooms are buggy with no air conditioning, and you are out of breath walking from the previous class. But, I feel as if the process of enduring the heat is of utmost importance. One needs to endure the summer time so they are fully prepared for fall, the best season. Without the summer, no one would be able to fully appreciate the amazing fall weather. I know I wouldn’t. That is why I loved reading about this topic as it is a perfect transition, especially for the current time. It seems as if you wrote this right around when the weather dropped down to a high of 60, instead of a low of 60, perfect weather if you ask me. I hope that you are enjoying this upcoming weather as much as I will.
Hi Jessica, I found your dislike for summer very relatable. I’m also not a fan of the heat or mosquitoes. My parents don’t like turning the air conditioning on in the summer to save money and my room is the stuffiest in the house. Since I sweat both easily and profusely, I usually opt for staying out of my house during the summer. As if that wasn’t enough, I’m extremely prone to being bitten by mosquitoes. When I went to China in 2016, I had more than fifty bites at one point that all swelled to the size of my thumb. At one point, it got so bad that my mom made me stay home instead of going hiking. Needless to say, these are all things I dislike about summer. However, I still find myself attached to summer break. For me, summer vacation is the only gap in school long enough for my family to go back and visit family, and with everything that’s happened in the past couple of years, it’s something I took for granted and really miss now. Because of this nostalgia that I have, summer remains on thin ice instead being a season I completely hate.
Hi Jessica,
I was born on the summer solstice, so I’ve always had an affinity to summer. Of course, this is NOT to say that I have no grievances with it, though. I’ll also chime in on the issue of mosquitoes, which, as your image notes, “ruin everything.”
I’ve never understood how some people are just “mosquito magnets,” while others seem to dodge the bullet. A quick Google search tells me that because mosquitos are attracted to lactic acid and ammonia, people who sweat more attract more of their attention. Ever since I was a child, my summers have been unavoidably filled with dozens of bites lining my legs and arms. For most of my life, I had no remedies. No idea how to keep the bugs at bay. No clue how to get the swelling to calm down. At one point, I became so exasperated that I made an exorbitant investment into a watch that purported to ultrasonic waves or something to repel mosquitoes. This is, as expected, hogwash.
I have an entire cabinet at home devoted to solving my mosquito problem. There are so many concoctions and mystery substances in there that I’ve experimented with on my own limbs that I could probably devote my entire blog to reviewing them.
All the same, I think it’s important for us students to enjoy and savor our summers, because eventually, there will come a point in adulthood where we don’t get “summer break” anymore. It’s just more of the same job and adult responsibilities, just in the heat. Notwithstanding the mosquitos, I’ll be cherishing the final real summer I have left here at home with my family, knowing my days of pickup basketball or a round of golf in the 90-degree heat are probably numbered.
Hi Jessica! Right off the bat from seeing your title I can tell that I will relate. Summertime sadness was also a song I used to listen to a lot as a kid, it was pretty good I think it was by girl in red.
I can totally relate to the sticky part. Summer makes you so sweaty and uncomfortable as well as stinky. I’ve hated it ever since I was a kid, though I can agree popsicles are pretty nice. Sunscreen is also the worst, you need it so that your skin doesn’t become musty but with sunscreen on my skin feels musty anyways. It feels so oily and not good for my skin even though it supposedly is. I also agree that it’s way harder to fall asleep in the summer. I like thick blankets but in the summer thick blankets make it so hard to sleep. It messes up my sleeping system so much. Bugs are also the worst, I don’t get much mosquitos but I get a lot of gnats. They keep swirling around your head and it feels like they’re gonna bite you even though they’re not. They just land on you and you have to flail around.