The Summer I Was Whole

First love

Photo by Jeffery Erhunse on Unsplash

Before adolescence began to disfigure me from within, there was one last summer when I was still one. There weren’t two versions of me. There was no strategy. No division. There was only one child, whole, breathing without fear.

I was about twelve. She also. The street where we played tennis was dirt, uneven, with dust hanging in the air and hot light that seemed to bend as it hit the ground. I don’t know if it was love, but something in me aligned when she appeared. A kind of serenity I hadn’t felt before and that, later, I wouldn’t experience again for decades.

We played every day. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes both. The ball went back and forth with an ease that I now find unrecognizable. I didn’t want to win. I didn’t want to impress her. I didn’t want to prove anything. I wanted to be there.

I wanted to maintain that rhythm. I wanted the ball to keep coming back to me. I wanted her to keep coming back to me. My friend, on the other hand, played as if he were fighting a battle. He competed, provoked, shouted challenges that she answered with a mixture of weariness and resolve. His energy was different. He needed to dominate. I didn’t. I needed to be there for her.

And, in contrast, even though I didn’t understand it then, it was telling me something essential about myself: that my way of connecting doesn’t stem from power, but from affinity. That affection, for me, is cooperation. That desire has no urgency when it isn’t afraid.

That summer, I visited her house many times. We were friends. We played like children. And yet, there was something more. Something silent. Something that didn’t yet have a language. There was no awkwardness, no shame, no anxiety. Being with her was so natural that now I find it hard to believe. There was no internal division, no surveillance, no critical gaze that I would later carry with me for years like an implacable judge.

I didn’t know I was experiencing my first love. I learned it later, when life grew heavier, and I found myself remembering it like someone recalling a dream in which I was still free.

What surprises me now is the absolute absence of fear. There was no fear of not being enough. No fear of rejection. No doubt. No mask.

It was me, unbroken. It was me before I learned to hide. It was me before the defense. It was me without the hidden depths that would soon appear.

Sometimes, summer is the most evident proof of who I could have been if the world hadn’t started closing in on me. I’m not saying my life would have been perfect. I’m saying something more straightforward and more complex: that I wasn’t born broken. That the breaking came later.

That summer was the last time my emotions were intact. The last time I trusted without reservation. The last time I felt without having to measure every gesture. The last time my body and mind weren’t at war.

And, although I didn’t know it then, it was also the last time I loved without fear. What came after—adolescence, the masks, the inner tension, the constant vigilance—wasn’t a natural continuation of that, but a rupture.

There’s a hidden grief here. Not for her, but for myself. For that whole self that existed and that I couldn’t preserve. For that child who could approach the world without armor.

But there’s more than grief. There’s a certainty.

Because every time I return to that summer, I feel that something of that child is still inside me. Something that didn’t die, even though it hid for too long. Something that wants to breathe again. Something that still points the way back.

And I think I need to tell this story before entering adolescence, because without this memory—without this compass—it would be impossible to understand what came after: how my insides fractured, how the double identity appeared, how the self hidden in the gaps of authority emerged, how religion class became a secret sanctuary.

This summer isn’t just an ornament in my memory. It’s the missing piece that makes it all possible. It’s a snapshot of my true self before the fall.

That’s why it comes back. That’s why it hurts. That’s why it matters.

And that’s why it has to be here, between my shattered childhood and the adolescence that’s already starting to creak.

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