a while back i was driving home from work and a friend called. he was at a restaurant and wanted me to come. i'd have needed to turn the car around and change the plan for the night. i couldn't do it that fast. i was already at the table. the dinner went long, and we talked the whole time. then i got home, and the night was mostly gone, and i could already see the morning coming in late. i could find the yes when i looked back. i couldn't find the part where i decided it. i call that drift. doing a thing i never decided, and finding out after.
a yes like that is the loud kind. somebody asks, and the answer is out of me before i've turned around, but at least i can hear that one. the quiet kind i don't hear at all. last month i was working late with a movie on in the gaps. every time the work stopped i hit play again, ten or fifteen times, and i didn't even want to see that movie. last week i was standing in the kitchen and my hand went to the chocolate wafer i keep for after the gym. there's always cut watermelon in my fridge, and it hit me that i'd never once decided to eat that either. i just did. some mornings the alarm goes at 4.33 and my hand keeps hitting snooze until 5, even though i don't want to snooze at all. it's been a handful of mornings now. nobody asked me anything in any of those. there was no yes to catch. they just happened, and i was the one doing them.
it took me a long time to see that the small ones and the years are the same thing. for years i said yes to too many people and too many things, at work and in the relationship i had then. i thought that was what getting along was. i had a lot of friends and a lot of nights out and a lot of scrolling. i called that a life, because everyone around me did. even my work went like that. i'd take the first answer that looked right and build on it. then three months later i'd find out it was never deep enough. none of it was decided. it was whatever was already there, and i went along with it. so the yes is just where the drifting finally got loud enough for me to hear. it isn't where it started.
for a while i kept looking for the thing to blame. the friend, the movie, the alarm. it kept changing, and it was always me. so what i practice is small. it's remembering. when i drift, i touch PRESENT on my chest and say "here." to remind myself where i am, and that whatever happens next, i'm the one doing it.
the things i never decided still count. that night i got home too late for the sleep i needed. a short night takes the morning with it, and the morning takes the day after it, like a domino, and work gets whatever is left. the three months on the wrong answer counted. the years counted. the days make me into somebody either way. i'd rather it be somebody i decided.
that was months ago. i can still go when a friend calls, on a night with nothing planned after it. next time it happens on the way home, i want to remember the night i'd already planned before i answer. i might still go.