Kairos

SUMMER, SILENCE, AND DREAMS

All summer, she tried to forget him. Every day was a battle with thoughts that relentlessly brought him back—every movement, every glance from school. She asked herself countless times: was she always the problem? Why was everything so complicated? Why did nothing she did work, while the world around her seemed to fit effortlessly into everything it touched?

Her memories carried her back to childhood and elementary school. She had already been the black sheep—brutally rejected, mentally tormented. Everyone was against her. She always stood out, not just for being quiet, but for not fitting in at all. Rejected, mocked, judged as a whole person. She had no safe place, neither in school nor outside of it. And when she returned home, an even harsher environment awaited—a toxic family, cold walls, with only two bright spots in the form of friends. She had never truly had the chance to be a child. Her childhood had been strict, harsh, and full of vigilance—always observing others, reading their intentions, always being careful.

No one had ever seen her for who she really was. No one cared. Men, women—everyone judged her. And she? She only found herself in nature. Only there did she feel love and safety, through a strange, almost mystical connection to the world around her. It felt as if a higher force cared for her, in its quiet, unobtrusive way, in moments when no one else was there.

In the silence of summer days, as she tried to push him out of her mind, she remembered a dream from her darkest times. She had dreamed of a boy with transparent blue eyes—watching her with understanding and warmth, rowing a boat through Italy while telling her that everything would pass, and at the end of the dream, just one phrase: I love you, even though I don’t know you well. All those years, all those dark memories, converged in that vision. And finally, she realized—he was that boy from her dreams.

But how was this possible? How could she recognize someone in a dream before meeting him in reality? The thought was astonishing, almost terrifying, yet at the same time comforting. Dreams from her childhood, from when she was alone, rejected, and lonely, had foretold his arrival. That miraculous, mysterious connection between dreams and reality gave her the sense that there was someone who would truly see her, someone who would understand her—even through moments of silence and the distance that separated them.

In that moment, all the confusion, disgust, disappointment, and unspoken words from the past months took on a different dimension. She realized that maybe it wasn’t all about him, nor about her insecurity. Perhaps it was their quiet connection, hidden in hesitation, avoidance, and the dream that had protected her through years of solitude.

The summer sun shone around her, and she stood alone, aware of everything she had been through—but now with a feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, it had all been leading toward some unseen plan. A plan in which she would meet him, recognize him, and maybe finally understand all those nuances she had once thought unexplainable.

A sorrowful summer, a silence that aches, and strange, lingering dreams.