It always seems to be the winter months which are the hardest. The sky is painted a forever shade of grey that dims the light in peoples’ eyes, trees cast crooked shadows on the cracked pavement and all the streetlights apparently die along with the sunset. In the winter too many words are uttered from chapped lips, sweaters feel constricting rather than comforting and it’s unclear whether the shivers felt in the night are from the cold or from hollowness. The sounds I hear refuse to drift from my head like they do in the summer, they rattle around in there like old keys on a chain and play on a loop on and on and on and on.
Everything is stifling and dark and frozen and I needed a way out.
My friend said she’d pick me up right after her work shift. She was worried about me. It was her first time driving with a license, so she took it slow, her glasses reflecting the headlights in front of her.
‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re just gonna drive’
We didn’t talk after that; I think we both decided silence was the best form of solace. The music from the radio filled the inside of the car instead, pressing on the door handles and pushing against the windows. I decided to let the roof down to let the music escape and it floated up and mingled with the icy air fluttering in our hair. We drove for a while like that, sitting in the loud silence and allowing our brains to quieten.
Little by little the stars above us began to poke through holes in the clouds like pinpoints in fabric. It was the first time I’d seen stars all winter. The clouds looked softer too, they had that sun kissed glow to them that only appears in the few minutes after the sun goes down. It was almost pretty. I leaned my head back on the seat so that my sight was completely absorbed by the sky above me. No, I was wrong, it was pretty. It was almost beautiful.
A slow smile crept onto my lips as a feeling of relief bloomed in my chest. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. It was enough to quell the clattering within my brain and to make me relax into the clothes I was wearing. It was enough to allow the radio to pass through my ears without become stuck halfway and to soften my muscles into the car seat under me. A haziness glazed over my sight as my eyes began to tire, seduced by the sliver of comfort I was being afforded. I glanced over at my friend only to see the same drowsy smile mirrored on her face. I wasn’t the only one who needed this. I tilted my head back towards the sky and for the first time in months I took a breath. I took a photograph in my mind of this moment and stored it away as a winter memory. And this memory, it wasn’t just pretty, it was also beautiful.
