how i spent my summer vacation

so i had 4 choices of topics to choose from for my english paper. i chose the ever so classic "how i spent my summer vacation". to me it meant a lot and even though this paper is not worth that much, i have a lot of pride in it. i think for a class assignment i put a lot of real true emotion into it, weather i wanted to or not. there were some parts that i would have rather left out, but it would have left holes in my paper, in my summer, and in my heart.


How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Every year a special season comes full term that everyone regardless of age, gender, race, job, lifestyle or financial situation looks forward to with the soul purpose of making it “the best one ever”, it is called Summer. We make it our personal duty to do anything and everything possible in this 3 month period of time that is grounds for discredit during the bleaker months that follow for whatever reasons. I am no exception, I actually take this idea and run with it even further.
This Summer was bound to be one for the books. Preceding my Winter months that carried on into Spring which was still the never ending party, I decided to continue to stay at my once thought of “Winter arrangement” into the Summer season. I had made a life time amount of friends in seven months and was in no hurry to change scenery, for where I lived was one of the most beautiful places on earth, Mammoth Lakes, California. Everything was coming to bloom, a thick layer of yellow pollen had collected on my car as I walked outside my house, I was in no rush for work, I took time to take in my “front yard” the Sherwin Mountain range that still had snow patches hidden away, glaciers. The whole town was under attack by yellow spores floating around, careless to the happenings of village, I’d stir up patches as a drove my beat up 2001 Ford to work. My days consisted of living the ultimate dream that middle aged people who sat in their cubicles would day dream about, hoping for a real get away other than leaving work thirty minutes early to catch the tail end of happy hour. A usual day consisted of me waking up at 8 am, taking care of my morning hygienic rituals in the bathroom I worked on overload trying to keep spotless while living with three boys, cleaning up the empty beer cans sprawled across our kitchen to our outside deck and collecting cigarette butts from the long night’s parties, waking my roommates up for breakfast, and drive two minutes down the road to work. My job was working at a leather store, we sold furs as well, the ironic part still stays at that I’m vegan. But the job paid overly well for the lack of actual work done, and I was working on the same strip of shops that six of my friends worked at with the ability to have all day pay to hang out. After I’d lock up the shop, there weren’t necessarily a plethora of things to do in a ski town during the Summer at night, but we always found something. Perks of living in “THE party house” was that there was always someone home weather they lived there or not and everyone always wanted to do something. More than that, I’d never have to feel alone, seeing as though my boyfriend at the time lived 3,000 miles across country in Washington, DC. We would party into the late hours of the night with our large but close knit group of friends doing various random acts and trekking through the forest late at night into old mining caves, we felt like it was the best time of our lives. And it was. From moving to Mammoth from Los Angeles, the vibe of the people and the atmosphere itself was completely different and in many ways indescribable to tell someone who “wasn’t there.” It couldn’t get much better than the friends I had, the house I lived in and the actual location I lived. I was the happiest I had ever been.
My days off from work were nothing short of lived to the fullest, no matter what was the plan. I could be doing anything from sitting on scolding hot black tire inter-tubes and pool floats with 10 people linked together floating down the Owens’ river all day, to sitting around the Twin Lakes shore camping or poolside and bbqing, to packing up backpacks to hike Mammoth rock for a picnic lunch. At some point in the day we’d meander over to the local pizza hub in the village because at least one of our friends would be working, which would mean free food and the dinner issue was solved. We’d sit outside absorbing the evening heat that we waited all winter for, when sandals were out of the question. I am by no means someone that could flourish and survive under the florescent lights of a office building, filing papers in monotonous task form, my vice the the outdoors. Every moment of sunlight and then some was spent outside soaking up as much of the harmful UVA/UVB rays as possible, only to further my belief that this Summer had sped up my enviable skin cancer possibilities. To me, all worth it.
This Summer I managed to scrape the left over savings of hard earned money into two different occasions for plane tickets, both to visit Washington, DC. It was my first time ever. I had gone to visit my boyfriend an accumulation of 30 days total. Because I was there for him, and not the glory of seeing our nations capital and the bed of our President was the last thing on my list of things to do. Though I did see much of the landscape, I focused my attention more so on him and not standing in line at the reflecting pool with all the other tourist. It all was an overwhelming experience, not my first time to a totally new place, but it was with the addition of living a life as if I had grown up there with the help of my boyfriend, the dizziness of being in love in a new surrounding, everything was sunshine and rainbows, so romantic, even in the horrible storms we ran into while vacationing on this beach house in Delaware. It was truly magical. But magic only resides in fairy tales for me, and the thoughts of these amazing days does nothing but haunt me now. With the residual affects of a recent break up, parts of my glorious Summer vacation had been darkened with heartache and sadness. Though I will never forget how wonderful it was, and how much of a princess I felt at the time, it does not erase the hole in my heart. Winter love was never meant to go past Spring I suppose.
Because of multiple reasons my Summer wonderland had to come to somewhat of a halt. Between my mother’s persuasive powers and my father’s growing illness, I felt it was within my duties as a participating daughter to do what I thought was best, and move back to Los Angeles. Against my better judgment, I did so with a laundry list of pros and cons. The idea was to go back to school and live at home free of rent which to any struggling child looks at like a mirage on the Serengeti Planes, looks good until its up close. So I did. Needless to say coming home to old friends was fun, it was like I never left the party and the people were still the same. To me, it was an alarm going off that Summer was over, adult day camp had ended and the real world had to start.
Although this summer seemed to have a routine without guidelines, it was by far the only Summer of its kind in my life history. The amount of meaning, understanding of self and endless possibilities has made its mark on me, though I have many summers to come, this is nothing less than unforgettable.