my sweet golden hour

I had just graduated from college. I was living in an apartment for which I paid myself, I had just opened a credit card, gotten a cell phone, and started paying my school loans. In other words, I had bills. I also had a job which didn’t pay me much, but at the time it felt like a jackpot, and it was more than enough to cover my bills. I had roommates, and together we had laughs and taco salad night but also disagreements and quirks and petty annoyances. We weathered snowstorms and biting cold morning walks to the market before the sun even rose (we called those “adventures”) and other internal seasonal shifts that we were in no way ready for or expecting. Some came like an angry afternoon storm and broke the unbearable thick weight of life, and others were as subtle as a chilled fall breeze that whispered of something soon to die. There were break-ins and there were break-downs, of both the emotional and automobile sort, all accompanied by tears. I moved twice, started dating once, broke up once, and swore off all of these things for the rest of my life at least once, but probably more. I loved work and hated work and wondered how I could really work eight hours a day and if getting an average review after my first year meant I would be just average now that I wasn’t in school anymore. I was at times annoyingly hopeful and at others desperately needy and I learned that I needed to learn how to get back up after taking a few hits. (It would be more years until I actually learned how to do that.) I also learned that five year plans are so over-rated and interruptions - the holy kind - aren’t rude but rather incredibly merciful. 

This was my sweet golden hour of life, when the fresh early dew sparkled and danced in new sun. To look at a photo of it, all you’d see is the glimmering light.