Day 140: Lemonade

Evening drinks with Maria, who’s back in the country to do her master's degree in Manchester, and is in Sheffield for the weekend. I meet her and Zoe in Head of Steam, then we walk through the drunken revellers and street hustlers to Devonshire Cat. Just like old times. We order two lemonades and an orange juice, and four bags of crisps. Find a small table and sit with our heads bent in low, talking about work, and being young, and being old, and the nature of time, and our first memories, and the cartoons we watched as children. Maria tells us about Polish breakfasts and Polish weddings. Zoe says it feels like we are at a school dance, with the cool kids off dancing while we sit in a corner eating crisps. Zoe and Maria are both very beautiful, and I think much cooler than most everyone in the building, so the idea that the three of us are the unpopular ones makes me smile. Of course I feel I am that way - but I don't much worry about that. 

And for me the evening is the kind of evening I wish I was having as a teenager. Not desperately trying to fit in somewhere I don’t. Racing to escape myself. But simply sitting and watching the gentle candles flickering in their pots. The fairy lights climbing the windows. Chatting with friends, enjoying this brief moment, then saying goodbye, and watching it go. Not minding that it doesn't last, that I'm sober and there is of course the usual boredom, and self-consciousness, and sadness of the night. I am getting better at resting in that moment, letting it be, accepting whatever it is that arrives.

I’m back home now, with a mug of tea and the silence of my bedroom at the top of the house. The lamp's bulb's light is reflecting in my phone screen, showing up all the small scratches in the glass. The bathroom fan is clicking. The computer is whirring. I can't hear any other sounds. 

And now this moment is ending, and here comes the next.