Once, I Feared Quiet Fridays

Once, I feared Friday nights. Not for what they were, but for what they exposed: the absence of plans, the silence of a phone that didn’t ring, the sense that everyone else was somewhere—laughing, belonging, shining together in some golden, unreachable place.

I would get dressed anyway.
Red lipstick. A hopeful dress.
Perfume I wore like a story I hadn't yet lived.

I went out alone. Not out of daring, but out of aching. I told myself I was adventurous, but in truth, I was simply afraid to be still. Afraid to sit in the quiet of my own life and wonder what it meant to be overlooked.

I was never the girl-group kind.
Never the college-forever friendships. Never the group chat buzzing late into the night.
I watched them, though—from across the room, from the other side of the laughter. I studied their ease, their unspoken choreography. I wanted it, even as I knew it wasn’t mine.

Instead, I made small talk with bartenders. I smiled at strangers and sipped slowly, trying not to look out of place. But I always did. Because I was.

And yet now—years later—I am still on Friday nights again.
But not because I’ve been left out.

Because I’ve come home.

The house grows quiet after bedtime—my son’s breathing soft behind his door, my husband’s familiar shape in sleep.
Just a book, a warm drink, maybe a few soft pages written by lamplight.
I no longer perform belonging. I inhabit it.

The ache has turned to reverence.
The loneliness has become a kind of peace.
Not because I stopped longing—but because I let the longing lead me back to myself.

I no longer dress for a room that isn’t mine.
I dress for the stillness.
And it suits me better than anything ever has.

—L.B.

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