The Summer I Tried to Become Someone Else

The Summer I Tried to Become Someone ElseGenre: Personal / Journal / Social CommentaryChallenge Fit: The Summer That Wasn’t

There are summers that feel like novels: warm, unfolding, full of discovery. And then there are summers that feel like footnotes, barely there, awkwardly inserted into the bigger story. The summer I tried to become someone else was both.

It started with a breakup and ended in burnout, which, looking back, feels like a cliché so familiar it should have been foreshadowed with thunderclouds and sad indie music. He left in April, just as the cherry blossoms started surrendering to the sidewalks. I didn’t cry. Not at first. I went to yoga, cleaned my apartment obsessively, and deleted our photos from my phone like I was pruning dead branches.

By May, I had a plan. Reinvention. It was time to become a better, brighter version of me. One who wore linen effortlessly, drank matcha, and never texted first. I cut my hair into bangs that didn’t suit me, dyed it auburn, and bought a pair of oversized sunglasses that made me look like I was always on the verge of becoming someone interesting.

Instagram liked this version of me. People commented fire emojis under my beach photos, which were staged, of course. I wasn’t at the beach to swim or read. I was there to appear effortless. I scrolled more than I slept. The glowing lives of influencers were my bedtime stories.

I started journaling every night, but not like before. This wasn’t the raw, messy handwriting of a woman healing. It was curated. I wrote as if someone else might read it, as if the future, cooler version of me needed documentation of her origin story.

I dated, too. A parade of emotionally unavailable men with good playlists and bad communication skills. They liked the idea of me. I played the part. We drank overpriced cocktails and exchanged stories polished smooth from overuse. I laughed too easily. I said, "I'm fine," too often.

In June, I quit my job. It wasn’t a grand, cinematic gesture. I just stopped logging into Zoom. I told myself I needed a break. That I was being brave. But the truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted anymore. Everything that once felt urgent and important now seemed like background noise.

By July, the cracks began to show. My bank account was thinning, my skin broke out from stress, and I found myself crying at yogurt commercials. I missed myself. The self who didn’t need to perform. The one who wore glasses, drank coffee with too much milk, and stayed in on Friday nights rewatching Studio Ghibli movies.

I was lonely, but not in the way people talk about. Not dramatically, with wine and voicemail confessions. It was a quieter loneliness. The kind that creeps in at noon on a sunny day. The kind that sits with you while your phone stays silent.

One day, I opened an old notebook. It was from three years ago. Before him. Before the job. Before I started trying so hard to be something new. The pages were full of poems I never shared. Honest ones. Angry ones. Ones where I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. I cried for that girl. I missed her more than I missed him.

So I wrote. Not for Instagram. Not for likes. I wrote for me.

I stopped wearing the sunglasses. I let the bangs grow out. I bought a cheap typewriter from a thrift store and started typing letters I never planned to send. One to my ex. One to my mother. One to myself.

By August, something had softened. The heat was still unbearable, but I walked slower. I noticed the sound of cicadas and the way the sun slanted through the blinds in my bedroom. I didn’t become someone else. I didn’t need to.

Because wholeness, I realized, wasn’t in reinvention. It was in reclamation.

That summer didn’t look like freedom. It looked like stillness. Like picking up the pieces I had thrown away in the name of improvement. Like choosing not to be seen so I could remember how to see myself.

And when September came, I wasn’t new. But I was more me than I’d been in a long time.

Maybe that’s the real plot twist: becoming who you were before the world told you to be someone else.