Lounge Act

Starting over doesn't always look the way you imagined

Photo by Nicolas Hoizey on Unsplash

It was Thursday night, and we found ourselves at Rough Edges, a new place downtown. You seat yourself and order at the bar.

The walls and ceiling were pressed tin. Splotches of chipped white paint exposed black and gray beneath. The tables looked as though they’d grown right out of the wide wooden plank floors.

“Let’s try the OG Dirty Soda,” I said, sliding the menu across the table.

It’s always interesting sitting in a brew pub when you don’t drink.

Behind us sat a man about our age. Shorts. Plain T-shirt. Baseball cap. He stared into his pint glass with the kind of expression that made you wonder if he was waiting for someone or just trying not to think.

A woman walked over.

“How ya doing?”

She wore bright pink candy-striped shorts and an oversized sweater. If she was our age, life had asked a lot of her.

A few moments later, another man joined them, carrying a beer. Jeans. Belt. Tucked-in T-shirt. Bright white hair beneath dark glasses.

Then I noticed the back of his shirt.

A Smashing Pumpkins tour shirt.

Do I look that old now?

As if on cue, Nirvana’s “Lounge Act” came over the speakers.

Yep.

These are my people.

Somehow our conversation drifted toward starting over in midlife after divorce.

My partner looked at me with a quiet confidence.

“I can see the positives.”

“I can too,” I said.

I meant it.

But there’s still a part of me that catches on the thought.

This wasn’t the plan.

I never imagined I’d be rebuilding my life at this age.

Then again, starting over has a strange kind of freedom.

When you lose almost everything, possibility becomes easier to see. There isn’t much left to protect. You get to decide what comes next.

In the background, Kurt Cobain sang:

“Tradin’ off and takin’ turns, I don’t regret a thing.”

I sat there finishing my Dirty Soda, surrounded by people who had probably grown up with the same soundtrack I did, across the table from a woman who is kind, deeply creative, incredibly smart, and who loves me exactly as I am.

It struck me that every part of my life—childhood, trauma, marriage, divorce, all of it—had carried me to this table.

To this Thursday night.

To this moment.

Not because every part of it was good.

But because every part of it became part of the road that led here.

And sitting there, with Nirvana playing in the background, I realized something I don’t want to forget.

I don’t regret a thing.

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