errántium libidinis

A Sunday afternoon.  

My English tutor once said to me that you know you’re happy in a relationship when you look at a person and can picture them on a Sunday morning 10 years down the line. I understand that now, as I can finally see it. I can now see my current significant other (I’m loathed to say boyfriend) sat in an armchair at the window, summer light drifting in and falling on to the issue of the Sunday Times and cup of coffee. I can see the navy V-neck sweater, faded chinos and worn in deck shoes and glasses. And then I realise, that in this vision, he hasn’t aged at all. And I don’t know why I can’t visualise us as being together at any other point in life than right now. Maybe it’s the commitment issues, maybe it’s the knowledge deep inside me that is telling me that it can’t ever work out, or maybe it’s the fact that I know the rose-tinted ideas we create for ourselves never pan out how we’d hoped. Who knows why? All I know is that I want to skip forward, past the awkwardness of the next few years. Past the ‘will we, won’t we’ make it of this summer, and the next, and all the uncertainty of the present. For the first time in my life, I want certainty and comfort that comes from a Sunday morning reading the paper over a cup of coffee in the lounge of a suburban London terrace. The worst part is, I know the likelihood of things working out that way is next to none.

When is it that the small things melt into the mundane, losing their charm? I guess that must be one of the secrets to a long and happy marriage. To never lose sight of the tiny things that you  could sit and watch for hours.