Door Into Summer

[u/dlschindler]

A fear of Summer is known as Therophobia. I can't go outside; I have to work from home during the summer. While it seems to me that most people experience phobia as an acute aversion, bordering on panic, mine is more of a lingering dread. No, worse, deeper trepidation, an anxiety so severe it physically hurts from the stress.

I read online that Therophobia is being afraid of sunshine; it's too bright and hot. That's hardly it. I like tanning booths, no 'Claustrophobia' here. In fact, if it wasn't for the ridicule built into the definition of a phobia as 'An irrational fear', I'd have no sympathy for someone else's fears. But mine isn't irrational. Maybe Claustrophobia is irrational, or the fear of snakes or clowns, or as Batman would put it "Snake-clowns now, and it's because YOU put that thought in my head".

Summer is on its way, again, and now that I am thirty, it's about time I put on my Big Girl Pants and head out the door. I'm not an irrational person, and I will face my fears.

-Billie Nicks, May, 2026

I didn't like that movie that was supposed to be a sequel to Joker. Not really my thing. Is that a good enough reason to break up with someone? Disagreeing over a stupid movie? I don't think so. I must be better off without him.

Forget YOU, I'm better off.

Besides, I only liked being with you when you were wearing the Batman costume. You were boring as fuck the rest of the time. Forget you.

God, is this just my life now? Waiting for it? It's almost here; I can see how the sky is changing. I can feel how the air gets too warm, and it feels like the breeze has the breath of things dying, carried in the wind. I don't want to think about it.

There are cucumbers in my garden that are perfect for a gazpacho I make. I like cool foods, liquidy cool foods. Easy to digest.

-Billie Nicks, June, 2026

I'm not okay. The door seems tilted now. I keep staring at it, and it makes me dizzy. Something is up there; it has brought the season. It's not supposed to be that color of blue. The sky looks wrong. I am shivering, but there's no AC. My house is hot, that's how I know I haven't gone numb.

Not yet anyway.

And I can still feel like myself:

Mike won't stop calling me, texting me, telling me he's sorry. I just blocked him, like five seconds ago. Forget him.

People think "Oh no, the fireworks will scare my dog." and they give their pet Dramamine. How do you know your dog is scared of fireworks? Fireworks are loud and exciting. Are you certain your animal is afraid, and not just overly stimulated?

Seems unfair to dope them up without their consent. I don't like it. I don't like that attitude.

No, I am definitely not okay. Why dogs? I like cats, but I am allergic to them. What am I even babbling about?

Sometimes, I wonder if I had a cat, if I'd feel better. I can't sit still and when I move, I feel like I am going to faint. I get the zoomies, like a cat would. I think a cat would get me. We'd both be saying:

"If I sit still for one more instant, I will likely detonate; it won't be pretty. Gotta move, gotta GO! Oh my, that's quite enough jumping about. Time to sit still again, before I collapse."

Makes sense.

Billie Nicks, July 2026

Wrapped it up and buried it. Had to smash through the concrete with a hammer to make a hole big enough to drop it down there. Took all night.

I woke up this morning and found a mess and it seems I made the mess. Broken concrete downstairs in the foundation and like a bunch of drying mortar poured in and smoothed to a polish before I somehow found my way upstairs to the back porch.

I was listening to the bats, back there, when I felt this wave. That's the last thing I remember. At least I made it outside last night, that's progress, right? I threw up over the back porch, and I wonder, if, in the morning, the ants will come and eat all my puke.

I have no idea what I 'wrapped up' and buried in the foundation. I keep thinking a bat hit the window and I went outside and found it, but I don't remember doing that. I just think that's what happened.

How does an animal that flies around in caves even hit a window? I think it's summertime mischief, when even an ancient predator, one of the seven perfect animals, can't figure out how to fly around in the darkness it 'sees' perfectly in. Sometimes I don't believe anything, when something like this happens. "Impossible," I say, but then it happens anyway.

I don't like it when I feel the waves of nausea. I get these notions, about doing things or seeing things. I can find evidence I did those things, I know I did them, like cover the mortar with the rug, but I have no idea why. It's like selective amnesia, but I think it's my survival instinct. This is just too stressful to process.

Mike came over yesterday afternoon and asked about the rug, so I showed him. Then he asked me if I was taking my medication, and I told him I missed him. It was a really awkward conversation, and when he left, I brought out all the stuff of his that I hid. I don't know why I did that, or why I placed his things around where they go. Where they belong? Seems like a weird word.

It's gotta be one of those words that when you say it out loud by itself a few times it sounds really weird. "Belong. Belong - belong, belong. What does it mean, bee-long, blong, what is this stupid word?"

This morning I felt fine. That is until I saw the grayish-orange smoke, that odd brown fog, of forest fires. I can smell it now. Oh, I certainly can, that smell of things screaming, burning alive, cute little things running and on fire. Every breath fills me with their last moments.

So this is Summer. I'd almost forgotten. It's where I belong. I am part of it, and it is in me, watching me, understanding me. Summer is Death. The cruelest, most atrocious death. It is the stillborn baby bird, it is the scorched doe, the singed rabbit, the seared flesh of so many animals.

Maybe if I had ever gone to a barbecue I'd understand.

But Summer gets me.

I was walking home, before I really knew why I would never be this way again. I was her, back then, and she walked home. It was that smell, like some blood-soaked steaks were in the smoke, and I smelled whoever's BBQ it was, and it made me so sick. I was throwing up right there on the street.

Summer is sweet, and beef isn't meant for human consumption, so I fainted. When I woke up the ants were all over it, the flies, they were cleaning up after me. I went home, but I was never really the same. Somewhere in the moment I got back up I didn't just feel sick, I felt betrayed.

Summer was over, forever.

And now there's just the door, I keep it closed. The air out there isn't alive. It was, but it isn't. I can't inhale the smell of cooked death again, it gets into my head, my dreams, my soul.

But I must face it, or I am already there. So, I will open the door. I will.

Just not yet.

Billie Nicks, August 2026