Goodbye Cruel Summer Hello to the Dark

Goodbye Cruel Summer Hello to the Dark

Summer should have been sweet. Long evenings outside, cool breezes drifting through open windows, the kind of light warmth that makes you want to stay out and never go in. Instead it came too hot, too heavy. After being in hospital I felt with the heat I could not breathe so 24/7 the air purifier was on and my Dyson fan. Heat waves rolled in one after another until the air felt like it was pressing down on me. Windows stayed shut, curtains drawn, fans rattling through the night with no relief. The streets looked abandoned, gardens dried out, and the laughter that should have filled the air never came.

It was not just me feeling it. Neighbours stayed in, children who should have been chasing each other down the road played on glowing screens instead. The corner shop sold out of water before midday. The news spoke of records breaking, of old people collapsing in their chairs, of crops failing in fields that looked more like dust than green. Summer, the season that should have been the gift, became a threat.

I tried to keep hope, told myself the heat would pass. But each morning promised the same harsh sun, the same burning pavement, the same restless nights. A season spoiled itself, too much to bear, stealing away the simple joys that used to make it shine.

Now the nights grow longer. The light fades earlier, the air sharpens, and the shadows of winter reach in like cold fingers. There is no gentle turn, only a hard swing from fire to frost. Goodbye to a summer that gave me nothing. Hello to a winter that promises no kindness.

Yet here is the strange truth. In the middle of that heat, in the quiet when the streets were still, I started to see things differently. Without the escape of summer pleasures, I had nowhere to hide from my thoughts. I walked through my own memories, I faced my own silence. The heat pinned me down until I had to listen to myself. It was cruel, but it was also real.

And now with winter waiting, I wonder if the dark will do the same. Cold nights have a way of pressing people close, of forcing us to light fires, to find company, to remember what it feels like to need someone. Maybe the heat took away comfort so the cold can remind me how to search for it.

I think about the year not as a circle anymore but as a swing of extremes. Too hot, too cold, never steady. Maybe the world is changing, maybe we are being pushed into a rhythm we do not want. But in that change, something wakes. People talk more about the weather now than ever, not in passing but in warning. We notice it, we feel it, we cannot pretend it is the same as before.

Goodbye summer. You burned instead of warmed. Hello winter. You will freeze instead of cool. Between you both I will learn what I can endure, and what I can hold on to. The fire and the frost together tell a truth: seasons no longer belong to us, they command us. All we can do is live inside their extremes and try not to break.

So I close the door on the past months, step forward into the dark, and wait for what comes. Goodbye the season that was unbearable hot and hard to breathe and hello to the next in lane. We live in hope it will be a better one than the cruel one that now leaves us behind.