In recent years it has started at some time in May for me. A crazy, excited feeling as the nights get shorter, days lengthen and very odd things happen inside my head. I’ve always been light sensitive, and I find it hard to sleep at this time of year. Sleep deprivation, if it goes on too long, causes me to hallucinate (or see things as they truly are, I am uncertain).
I know this mad rush towards midsummer is something others experience. For winter folk, drawn to quiet and darkness it can be a disturbing time. I find it intoxicating – I get merry and silly, I may have the ‘you know I really love you’ phase and I know if I get too carried away there will be backlash afterwards. Akin to being drunk, in so many ways.
Outside my window, the plant life is growing in profusion, caught in the same tides of sun and energy that I’m feeling. The urge to create new things, and to make chaos is very strong. If I’m going to do something mad, or irresponsible, now is the time of year for it. Also in these deranged days comes a courage I don’t have in darker months. I want to grab the moment and squeeze out every last drop of experience.
One of the consequences of highs, are the inevitable lows that follow. The morning after experience, the sense of burnout. If nothing has been achieved during the rush, then there comes a hollow, lost feeling as the days shorten again and the wheel of the year turns.
Every year I get caught up, with no sense of what I should be doing, what it all means, what it might be for. This time last year, Tom and I were just getting together, this year we’re waiting on the visa application, but there should be the most incredible unleashing of potential any time now. Perhaps, for the first time in my life, the midsummer madness will come with purpose, and by the end of it, amazing things will have happened and I will not be left so bruised by the tides of the sun.
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