I’ve started going to the grocery store late at night. Not because I need anything urgent, though I’ll convince myself I do, but because theres something about fluorescent-lit aisles after dark that feels like church.
Maybe thats dramatic. But hear me out.
During the day, grocery stores are chaos. Carts colliding, crying kids, someone blocking the entire pasta aisle while they FaceTime their mother about marinara. Everyones in a rush, performing efficiency, grabbing things off lists they wrote in a panic between meetings.
But at night? Different congregation entirely.
Theres the guy in paint-splattered jeans buying a single banana and a Red Bull. The woman in scrubs, still wearing her hospital badge, staring at the frozen meals like they hold answers. The college kid with a cart full of ramen and energy drinks, probably procrastinating a paper due at midnight. And me, pretending I came for oat milk but really just needed to be around people without having to talk to them.
We’re all there for something we cant quite name.
I’ve been thinking alot about loneliness lately. Not the kind where your physically alone. I have friends, my life is full of people. But that other kind. The one where your surrounded and still feel like your watching everything through glass.
Research says loneliness is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It increases your risk of early death by 26%. We’re more “connected” than ever. Screens buzzing with notifications, group chats, social media feeds. But somehow more isolated.
The grocery store at 10 pm feels like the antidote, even if its a temporary one.
Theres an honesty to it. Nobody’s pretending. We’re all just trying to get through the week, one forgotten ingredient at a time. The cashier looks tired. I look tired. We exchange the kind of smile that says, yeah, I know, me too.
I linger in the produce section longer than necessary. Run my fingers over the avocados, testing for ripeness I dont actually care about. I’m not even hungry. I just dont want to go home yet. Not because home is bad. Its good, its safe. But because sometimes you need to exist in a space where nobody expects anything from you.
Where you can be anonymous and seen at the same time.
I read once that third places, those spots that arent home or work, are disappearing. Coffee shops are full of people on laptops with headphones in. Bars are expensive. Libraries close early. We’ve traded communal spaces for convenience, and now we’re all just drifting.
So we end up here. Aisle seven. Staring at cereal we dont need. Pretending we have a reason.
Theres something oddly comforting about it, though.
This accidental community of night shift workers, insomniacs, and people like me who just needed to leave the house.
We dont talk.
We dont exchange names. But we’re here together, moving through the same quiet ritual.
Picking up items. Putting them back. Trying to remember what we came for.
I grab the oat milk I didnt need and head to checkout. The cashier asks how my nights going, and I say good, you? Because thats what you say. But theres this flicker of recognition in her eyes. The kind that says she knows I didnt come here for groceries.
I get back in my car, oat milk on the passenger seat, and sit for a minute before starting the engine. The parking lot is mostly empty. A few scattered cars, their drivers probably doing the same thing I am. Lingering in the in-between.
I think about all of us. The paint-splattered guy. The nurse. The college kid. All of us orbiting our own lives, looking for a place to land, even if just for twenty minutes under terrible lighting.
Maybe the grocery store at 10pm isnt church.
Maybe its just proof that we’re all trying. That even in our loneliest moments, we’re still reaching for something. Even if its just oat milk we dont really need.
-AP