i’m on my way!!

the unbridled joy of afternoon plans

If I could bottle up one feeling and keep it with me forever, it’d be this: heading out for a Saturday afternoon with your friends, texting them I’m on my way while still trying to make it out of the door. Maybe you have an outfit on that you feel good in, maybe your cheeks are a little sunburnt from the day before, maybe you’re carrying with you a bottle of wine to drink at the park. I love nothing more than a long afternoon in the summer.

I’ve been a little bit lonely recently. Surprise! When you move somewhere new, it’s hard to make friends. Cue the shocked gasps and hand-over-mouths. But I’ve been lonely because the sun is out and the feeling I love so much, of calling a friend to see what they’re up to and meeting up for a walk or a drink or a meal, is not one I can easily replicate without, well, friends. Don’t get me wrong— being en route to plans with people you don’t know is also a secret pleasure of mine. God, how I adore the nervous jitters in your stomach in the back of an Uber to a party where you only know one person. How my brain starts writing little stories of the people I’ll meet and the connections I’ll make. That would be the second feeling I’d bottle up, right next to the first.

Plans that I’d agreed to last minute and almost backed out of before thinking, oh what the hell, and spending the next 6 hours with people I’d only just met are such a gift. The feeling of sitting on the bus, or in my car, twisting my rings nervously while I wait to introduce myself to people. The feeling of literally not knowing how a day will go. Will I enjoy myself? Will I want to leave early? Will I make a new friend? I almost never want to leave early. What I love about standing on the precipice of afternoon plans is that I feel very alive in doing so. I am open to the experience, all things included. The problem with not knowing many people in a new town, though, is that the quintessential link, the one person in the group who decided to invite you along, doesn’t exist. And so those beloved spontaneous afternoons haven’t happened in awhile, sadly.

Summer is a lot of things but mostly it’s the promise of being outside a lot more than usual, of leisurely existing in other people’s company, of wanting to check out the new bookstore after work instead of heading straight home. It’s hey, what are you doing tomorrow for lunch? Summer has always made me feel a little larger than life. Being lonely in summer is hellish, I have to admit. Yes, I can go for my runs and read my books and lay in the sun but I want those sunny, long afternoons with my friends. I want to saunter down a sidewalk drinking an iced coffee, flip flops scuffing along the pavement. What a sound that is: flip flops on pavement.

And don’t get me started on the ride home after a day spent soaking up the delicious feeling of being alive and present and maybe a little drunk. Leaning your head against a window, watching the pink skies fade to purple. My feet always ache a bit and I’m usually dehydrated, but content. I’ve eaten my fill of being a human amongst other humans, so I don’t worry about much. I especially love the nights where it’s just chilly enough to wrap a jacket around my shoulders.

This could be a love letter to summer, or a cry for help from the inevitably sharp parts of moving, I’m not sure. I do know that I’m trying to pay attention to the parts of life that I love. And it’s this: listening to The Cars, smelling like sunscreen and coconut, on the drive to pickup a few friends. We don’t know exactly what we’re doing, maybe we’ll go listen to live music or grab dinner or just sit at the water, but the rest of the day is ours. I roll the windows down and lay an arm out into the breeze while my friend tells me the absolutely ridiculous thing that happened to her at work that day. We laugh, I turn up the music, the day is only beginning.