#perhapslove

When it comes right down to it, I prefer staying home.

There have been many Friday afternoons around 4:00 when suddenly a piercing question scratches at me: “What are you going to do tonight?” generally followed immediately by, “Why don’t you have plans tonight?” This feeling started in college, a season where time is an unlimited resource but money is so finite. It was easy to imagine my real-life friends having imaginary plans and that everyone was having fun without me.

What do normal people do between 4:30 and 7:30 on Friday evenings? In framing this question, I realize it inherently negates my normal experience. It is the extrovert’s public life that is normal; the introvert’s private life is enshrouded. 

One late afternoon on a Friday, I was driving home from work. The misery of my question laid heavily on me. “Why don’t you have plans tonight?” I lived, at the time, in a one-story ranch that had been a foreclosure before my roommate’s parents purchased it as a property to flip. As they say, the bones were good, but many areas of the house were under construction at any given time. In college, this is still a step up from living in campus dorms. 

As I pulled into the (mostly grass) driveway beside the house, the golden afternoon sun blinded me through the windshield. The beauty of the late afternoon, even still, makes me think, “behold the glory of God.” Nothing so hazy, saturated, and warm as a golden afternoon can be anything short of glorious. 

I looked at my phone. It blankly looked back at me. There was nothing to say.

Somewhat mournfully, I entered my empty house and set down my bag. There were absolutely no plans clamoring for my attention. Classes had homework; the internship had assignments; the house had projects; I was laid completely bare before a clean slate of an evening. It was easy to imagine a house filled with friends of mine currently buzzing with activity as women raided their roommates’ closets and applied eyeliner. It was easy to imagine an apartment filled with friends in my circle connecting an Xbox to a wall projector and filling the living room like a movie theater. Friends who recently crossed into 21 were delighted to discover they could now use their real ID to congregate at bars. Friends I knew teamed up with strangers I’d never met to pile into a car and drive to the neighboring campus 30 minutes down the road.

And I--despondent at what should be an action-filled, lively, exciting evening--made a sandwich in a kitchen with exposed drywall.

If I were being honest with myself, I had (and have still) wonderful friends. It took many years of having plans (and not having them) to arrive at a place where I no longer imagine the hypothetical fun things all my friends are doing without me on a Friday afternoon. 

When I come home from work, I lavish in the golden afternoon sun. Why raid someone else’s closet and put on eyeliner when I can behold the glory of God through my windshield? Why sit on the couch and watch another iteration of the same game when the flowers are unfolding in the spring and the leaves are changing in the fall? Why drink at a bar when I can drink on my porch (in sweatpants and without driving anywhere)? 

The beauty of a Friday between 4:30 and 7:30 pm is in its sacred singularity. An ordinary day is transformed by its freedom of opportunity. As jobs and relationships have come and gone, Friday evening remains an open window. I have come to rely on this corridor of my life to fully unwind and cherish a moment to breathe.

I imagine my real friends having imaginary fun getting dressed, going out, getting together, as I uncork a bottle of wine and unhook my belt. I imagine my real friends staying out and replicating their adventures online as I behold a golden evening from the sanctuary of my porch. It took too long to recognize I had created a perfect and delightful pattern. I am not missing out. I am in love with this.

As 4:00 on Friday afternoon approaches, relief and joy rush to meet me. The question “Why don’t you have plans tonight?” has been replaced with the thought, “Thank goodness you don’t have plans tonight!” as if my entire adulthood has been building toward the possibility of freedom and being unencumbered by obligations. This makes perfect sense to me. Freedom to enjoy being alone is always what I had secretly been looking for.