oh, how i ache for you

I'll never say no ever again.

Quickly:

👉🏽 Register for Sober from Bullshit Recovery Club here (additional monthly date added!) February 3 + February 15 // next one is this Wednesday i.e. tomorrow.
👉🏽 February writing workshop is live, and the theme is Abundance vs. Scarcity.
Register here (Sunday, 2/28).

Photo by Xuan Nguyen on Unsplash

Dark bare branches against a cloudless blue; wind; then overnight—literally—blossoms, tiny pink puffs like a newborn’s exhale made visible. First they’re tight, puckered, and then they expand, reach, grow as vast as their humble circumference will allow. The quickness of their arrival is always a surprise. This is the time when I see the most birds, except for in the fall when the menacing crows come—and this is not a judgment, I love a good menace; no, it’s springtime when the gossipy songbirds arrive, the different types not seeming to be bothered by each other’s presence, not like the crows who battle it out with the hawks, or the scrub jays who come around with their loud and shrieking squawks, obnoxious as hell, but we all put up with them, like the extremely hot friend who thinks they’re funnier than they are, and we try not to roll our eyes so we plaster our faces with smiles instead because to be in their orbit makes us feel a degree or two hotter, too, and sometimes—like during a pandemic—it feels so good to feel sexy, even when it’s all pretend; anyway, these little songbirds dance about the branches and once the blossoms are almost tipping over into done-ness, the birds help them along, unceremoniously plucking the pops of pink off the branches with their cute-ass beaks, dropping them rudely on the driveway, covering cars with dusts of pink. Immediately, the purple leaves shunt out, becoming fluffier and fluffier, diffusing the light through the window enough that I can flail about naked and not worry about the neighbors calling the cops, and this is around the time when the idiot mourning doves build their sloppy nests, and leave sloppy messes on the entryway, and of course I can’t help but adore them, especially when the aforementioned hawks and crows lurk too closely, looking for a snack.

Summertime is cold here, I’ll spare you the clichés, the fog socks us in and I’ve given the stalwart space heater his own name. The days of light are precious, and this is also the time of year where the morning and afternoon light filters through the leaves and casts shadows in dapples along the walls of this room of my own, dancing about in kaleidoscopes, so I lay on the floor, staring, dreaming, of warm beaches and breezes, sand beneath, blue sky above, salt in my hair, my nose, waves in my ears, coconuts, baby turtles, sunburns, and water, the friendly kind that you can float in and not disappear.

Then comes the fall, and the leaves begin to drift down the street, and there’s one neighbor’s driveway where the fallen leaves seem to accumulate in piles (sorry, neighbor), and there’s something, wait no, not something, everything, about this time that I love, this stripping away, this making bare, this do-over, this reckoning, this taking stock, this humbling down, this whittling, this second (or thousandth) chance, this clearing out, this detox, this honesty, this truth-telling, this exposure, this inability to hide or cover up or deny. These are the days of blazing sunsets and visibility so crisp you can see the Farallon Islands to the west, Mt. Diablo to the east, of shoving a season’s worth of joy into the three weeks of true summer that finally arrives in September, thank god, of those last long days of bare shoulders and exposed thighs before the darkness returns that sends us all back inside by 5pm.

Oh, yeah, winter: cold window, space heater, less birds, lingering leaves no match for 70mph winds, goodbye, staring at the hummingbird, she still comes, every day, I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned her until now. Quiet time, soup time, chai-too-late-in-the-evening-time, insomnia time. Baked goods time, don’t lie. Stars and planets in a bonkers, once-in-a-lifetime celestial dance, and you’ll forgive me, that phrase is just too fun; books in piles by the bedside, candles on the mantle, wreath on the wall, and I’m so grateful the way my head feels resting on your shoulder, even as I count the days until the time change and we can all exhale and wear shorts and I can complain again about pink blossoms and plums and bird-shit swirling Pollock-like on my windshield.

I’ve spent so much time in this room.

*

I am a ghost, and what haunts me are declined invitations.

I wake up remembering all the things I said no to, because I was tired, or lazy, or because I’m a daytime woman now and I’m sorry, your set doesn’t start until 10pm? I kick myself for foregoing invitations to dance to Fleetmac Wood with Diego, or the thousand times I shrugged off Shannon asking me to go salsa dance, or Devo’s DJ sets, or all the excuses I made for why staying at home was a better choice than going out to be with musicians and instruments and sweat and sound and expectation and that impossible to recreate sense of collective longing and want. I even miss the annoying people who press through the crowd and stand right in front of you just when the band’s about to start and you’ve already been standing there for a long-ass time. I miss faces turned up to stages, lights casting eyes and smiles in warm glows. My god, I miss smiles, I miss easy touch, I miss heads thrown back in laughter, I miss shared straws and spoons and oh my god you have to try this!

More than any of this, what I most ache for are long tables laden with homemade food, all the chairs pulled from all the random corners of the house crowded around to accommodate all of you. Navigating elbows, reaching across each other for seconds, passing the basket of bread around, teasing, gossiping, envisioning. I miss eating people’s family specialties, I miss oysters shucked from a cooler in a kitchen, I miss hovering around a backyard bbq when the burgers are ready. I miss hey, just come over, and spontaneous coffees on the back porch; I miss piling on the couch, talking shit over dumb movies, pass the popcorn; I miss lechon at Eddie and Mariely’s, Tío Amaury showing up with boxes and boxes of pastelitos from Porto’s, all of us marveling at each other, we made it another year. I miss road trips, sharing snacks, holding the wheel so you can drink some water while you drive. I miss running into you at cafés, on the street, on BART, that specific joy of recognition, unexpected connection. I miss you, goddamn. I am desperate for you. I love you. I will never say no again.

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Slow Motion Sober is a newsletter and community for creative types who are sober or curious about sobriety, and all the life-y intersections along the way. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, facilitator and sobriety advocate in San Francisco, CA. 

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