the things you didn't carry

it hit me while driving to work this morning on a friday. it's hit me before, i suppose, but it's surprising every single time. mornings before work were usually sad. i'd drive to elvis depressedly or sufjan stevens or waxahatchee or flatsound or teen suicide or normal state and mope and stare ahead at the blank canvas of a flat landscape dotted either by grey winter clouds or grey crumbling roads, and that would be my morning. and then my evening would be the same. leave work, drive, sad music, home, sad music, white carpet now grey from dust and so many spilled drinks i cant keep track. grey grey grey. everything.

i drove to work today happy. i listened to happy music, i smiled at one point. i've had mornings like this before, but in the last year they've become more common. they used to be relegated to days leading up to trips to far away locasles. now they're relegated to days. the evening before was wonderful, the weekend ahead will be wonderful, and the things i carry on my shoulders seem a bit lighter for once, less suffocating, less heavy. i drive to work with eyes focused not on the grey right in front of me of another cold, snowy day, but on the time when i will be done with work, on the time when i see her, on the time when we can hug and laugh and share in each other's lives. i don't really know this feeling, it feels like i am shedding 20 years of not having it. it's relearning a bike i did actually forget how to ride. it's relearning me, relearning life. i sang the last few lines to a song that played as i pulled into the parking lot at work. the falsetto i can't reach with my limited range spewed "you're stuck in my mind, all the time." nothing truer has been said.