Things That Keep Me Here

I have started making appointments for the future.

Every week, I find something to look forward to. Sometimes, it is as simple as a Saturday date with my boyfriend—finding somewhere to eat, ordering something we have never tried, and playing the games we keep promising we will get around to. Other times, it is a promise waiting somewhere further ahead: dinner next Friday, a birthday in October, a movie in December, or finally visiting that restaurant we have been saying we should try for months. I keep putting little things on the calendar, as if filling the empty squares might make them worth reaching.

Next week, we said we would try that recipe we saved. The week after, maybe we will finally taste the matcha everyone keeps talking about. 

In October, it is my best friend’s birthday. I already know I want to be there. I want to see their faces when the candles are lit, hear everyone singing slightly out of tune, taste whatever cake we end up buying, smell the wax after the flames disappear. I want to complain about how old we are becoming and take photographs we will laugh at years later.

So I mark October in my calendar.

Then December.

There are movies I have promised myself I will watch when December comes. I want the particular feeling of leaving a theater at night, when the air is colder and the streets are decorated with lights. I want popcorn on my fingertips, the last scene still playing somewhere behind my eyes, the sound of people talking about the ending as they walk toward the exit.

I have learned that anticipation has a texture.

It feels like a page folded down because I am not finished reading. It feels like the smooth paper of a reservation receipt tucked safely into my wallet. It tastes like the matcha I have not tried yet, sweet or bitter or completely different from what I imagined. It smells like rain before an afternoon date, like coffee waiting on a table, like someone’s perfume lingering after they have hugged me goodbye.

Sometimes, I make plans for places I cannot yet afford to visit.

Japan.

I want to see it in the way photographs cannot teach me to see it: the crowded streets, the trains, the small restaurants glowing late at night. I want to hear announcements in a language I do not understand. I want to taste something bought from a convenience store at midnight. I want to feel winter against my skin and walk until my feet hurt simply because there is still somewhere else to go.

I want to see the aurora borealis.

I want to stand somewhere beneath a sky that looks impossible and know that all those photographs were only evidence of something much larger. I want to be cold enough to complain about it and amazed enough to forget.

I want to go bungee jumping.

I want to know what it feels like to stand at the edge of something terrifying and still take the next step. I want to go cliff diving somewhere blue and deep, hear someone count down from three, feel the brief weightlessness before the water takes me in. I want to come back to the surface laughing, breathless, alive in the most literal sense.

There are stranger things I want, too.

I want to be welcomed home by cats.

I want to open a door someday and have small creatures run toward me because they know I belong there. I want their paws against my legs, their impatient meowing, their bodies curling beside mine as though my arrival is the most ordinary thing in the world.

I want a peaceful home.

A place where nothing is waiting to hurt me. A kitchen that smells like something is being cooked. Sunlight entering through curtains in the morning. A table with things left carelessly on it because there is no fear of losing them. A room where I can sleep without needing to prepare myself for the next day.

I want a life quiet enough to hear myself in it.

And so I keep making plans.

A restaurant with friends. A weekly date. A recipe to ruin together. A matcha I have not tasted. A birthday in October. A movie in December. Japan. The aurora. The jump. The dive. The cats. The home. The next thing. Then the next. Then the next.

Sometimes I wonder if this is what hope actually looks like.

Not a sudden conviction that everything will be beautiful. Not waking up one morning is certain that life is worth all the trouble.

Maybe it is making enough plans that tomorrow becomes too crowded to leave.

So I keep adding things.

One more date.

One more meal.

One more trip.

One more strange, beautiful thing I have never done.

I keep giving the future small pieces of myself to look after. And for now, the future keeps giving me reasons to come back for them.