life lately

by

Has been about growing up. And I know that’s something a 29-year-old should stop saying because, please, shouldn’t you have grown up already, but there it is. There have been decisions to make, difficult ones, and sometimes my heart doesn’t hold the answer, at least not in its entirety. Is there anything more grown-up than reading between the lines when somebody tells you to follow your heart? Life lately has been about learning that you can’t trust every girl in a vintage dress just because her red-lipstick smile shines from across the room, especially not if you don’t know how she takes her tea, what she prays for at night, what her sadder side looks like. But it’s also been about faith in humanity restored, how a gentle, white-haired captain can talk you into swimming with fishes and dangling from a rope strung between two small islands, your feet swinging beneath you the way they did when you were three and you tried to sit on a bar stool taller than you are. Life lately has been books and spreadsheets and conference rooms and staying in on Friday nights, and my boyfriend saying one weekend, “I think today we should go to a museum,” but we end up ordering fried chicken and macaroni soup instead, watching a movie about two tired old men in love. Sometimes I think I’m being too kind and sometimes I regret not having been kind enough, which is infinitely worse. I’ve been wondering about the best way to say goodbye to something I’ve lived and breathed for so long. I’ve been counting down the days until I say hello again.