People say, "Summer is made for love," but I increasingly notice that summer can be made for something stranger and more contradictory — for ourselves. Sometimes I watch couples walking together, laughing at trifles, hugging each other so that it seems as if the world around them ceases to exist 💑. And then a small prick appears inside — not envy, no, something else. It's a feeling that someone is already using what I have yet to discover inside myself.

I want to remember the taste of ice cream at dawn, the smell of wet grass after the rain, the feeling of warmth on my skin when the sun lazily sinks below the horizon 🌅. And I understand that this can be my summer. My present, even if it is not accompanied by someone's hand in mine. I am learning to be brave enough to look at couples and smile at them, and not to gnaw at myself from the inside. I am learning to allow myself to be joyful without someone next to me 💛.

Sometimes I think that loneliness is not about emptiness. It is about the space that I can fill myself: with books, walks, strange thoughts and sunbeams that make me alive. The sun is still there, you can still catch every moment until August goes away forever. And maybe this is my little, secret love - love for myself 🌞💫.

I don’t know if someone will be next year. But while August is still here, I choose to be my own sun.

Iria