Thanksgiving Eve

Some things do change. Tonight I had a few beers with some friends at my local pub [that is a gorgeous one-block from my home} and it was easy and impromptu and just what the doctor ordered. I leaned back into the wooden bench and threw all of my worries around the room, expelling them from my body. I leaned into conversations and large pints and laughed from my belly. I thought of what the night used to be as I watched young faces come in and out of the pub all night long.

Back in my youth we would stay away as much as humanly possible from the town we grew up in, we would shun it really. Even if we only went to university a few towns over, we would give our shitty little town the middle finger and ignore it.
Push it away like a bad lover.
Like a disease.
We would relish in the new people we were becoming-
the cooler more existential versions of ourselves.

    Until the holidays rolled right round and we were like moths to a flicker flacker fucking flame.
We came back in droves to the tiny town and crowded into the only pub we ever knew, the one we cut our whiskey teeth on and sat on bar stool spinning the night away. It was always the same for that small window of time. People would arrive and look at each other with aloof glances at first- wondering if enough time had passed to be friends or lovers again. Wondering if we did enough shots together that we would have the courage to be our true selves.
We were worldly now. New music and literature and themes and ideals coursed through our blood and we were savages of experience. Things were going to change. Things were going to be epic that night.

   But it never was. We always reverted to type. The drunks were louder and fought imaginary demons on cold corners and the sluts were slutty and we all vomited in the back parking lot like groundhog day. It was just the same only amplified. But it was awesome.

And I kinda miss that time when I get all maudlin at the holidays. I miss it like a lost one. I miss stumbling down to the phone booth on Front Street and calling up my sometimes lover and just leaving it all behind. I don't want it back and my life is richer than velvet now, but I sometimes miss it- just that feeling. And I am smart enough to know exactly what it is. And it scares me on the eve of yet another birthday that that thing is simply my youth.