The Thursday I Didn't Talk Myself Out Of

There's a version of that night where I don't go. I had already changed back into my pajama shorts. I was like forty percent committed to watching something on TV and calling it a Thursday. And then I went anyway, and the whole ride there I was doing that thing where I rehearse how tired I already am, preemptively, as a defense mechanism.

I don't know how to explain why it was good. The venue was small, the kind of place where the stage is really just a slightly raised section of floor and you're close enough to feel the speakers in your sternum. The music wasn't anything I knew. I stood near the bar for a while and didn't feel the specific pressure to be somewhere more specific, which is a thing I normally feel at these kinds of events and I just, didn't. I leaned against the counter and let the room happen.

Leaning against the bar like I was absolutely not thinking about going home already.

At some point I stepped outside for a few minutes, and it was one of those July nights where even after dark the air is still warm, not uncomfortable, just present. I stood there and thought that I'd come back in in a second and I didn't want to go home yet. That's the whole story, really. That was the thing worth writing down.

The part where you step outside for two minutes and just breathe.

I've been doing this thing lately, since the iced coffee week, if I'm honest, where I'm noticing when I feel okay. Not great, not fixed, just okay, and present enough to catch it. Thursday was that. I didn't tell anyone I was going and I'm telling you now, a week later, which is probably the most me-shaped thing I've done all summer.