So I went away for a little bit. This tends to happen in the aftermath of a heartbreak, which I will blame for my absentee-ism even though two months getting over a useless crush sounds pathetic (it took more like two weeks, but whatev). That situation went down, and then once the dust settled... I had posts I wanted to do, but motivation wasn't there. I've spent the last few weeks embracing my frustrations with mixed results, and while writing here was definitely something I knew I needed to do, I couldn't find the right push.
Then I started noticing some parallels, and that I needed to act on.
First, a little background. The titular Impulsive Summer is an event that occurred four years ago, the summer I graduated from high school. It gets its name because... well, my family made a lot of snap decisions over about a month. That, in turn, happened because we were waiting for my paternal grandfather to die. There really is no other way to put it. He'd had a rabbit's nest of medical issues for years, and the downward spiral had finally happened. It was just a matter of holding our breath, waiting for the phone call that would drag us up to northern Wisconsin for a week, and doing things on instinct while we could.
I distinctly remember that we weren't sure my grad party would even happen (it did, even though Grandpa was dead by then, because there was a week between the death and the funeral because of logistical stuff that 17-year-old me did not quite catch). We all acted in the moment during that grayspace. I was spared from the awkwardness of shamelessly eyeing my object of affections at a mutual acquaintance's grad party (while our parents talked three feet away because my dad had previously worked with object-of-affection's mom's bestie from high school or something - Cinci is a fishbowl, I swear) because we wanted to see a movie the weekend it came out because otherwise we wouldn't have seen it. I'm not entirely sure there are words for what that summer was, but there was definitely never a dull moment.
(I will not talk about my grandfather's funeral other than the fact that it was a really weird time to learn how my dad proposed to my mom and the fact that Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" is probably the most inappropriate funeral song ever. My dad and I nearly put it in the slideshow anyways, but we decided at the last minute that while my grandma is a tiny woman, she's still scary as hell and it wasn't worth the risk. Harry Connick Jr.'s version of "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" was also not quite worth the risk. Nor was Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust". My uncles nearly got a mix CD that Christmas of songs we were not allowed to use in the slideshow. They would've thought it was funny!)
Fast-forward to this summer. Once again, we have a family member in questionable health (probably not on the verge of death but ya never do know). And once again, that air of the impulsive surrounds me. Anything is possible this year.
There are a few other similarities. Movies, for instance. Summer 2011 was defined for me by X-Men: First Class - a movie I did not expect to love featuring a relationship that mirrored my doomed (but at the time vibrant and hopeful) first love. Summer 2015 could still go a lot of ways there, but so far the only "summer movie" I've seen (and the only one I plan to see) is Mad Max: Fury Road - a record-breaker for practical effects, a two-hour car chase, and a film that resonated with me on an unexpected personal level. (I'd say there'll be a post about that later, but again, motivation is a weird beast.) Beyond the emotional resonance both films have for me, they also feature two of the same actors in similar supporting roles - Nicholas Hoult as an adorable puppy in full-body makeup (I have accepted that this is a Situation for me) and Zoe Kravitz side-eyeing everything that moves in the background. Weird, weird similarities.
There's other stuff, I'm sure, but it's late and I can't think of it right now. What matters is... well, Impulsive Summer 2.0 is apparently happening. Where it'll go, we just don't know.
Song of the day - "Bulletproof Heart", My Chemical Romance.
