the length of waves

So why do this now? If you don’t know what this is, please take a step back and read here.

 

I spent a portion of last week in San Francisco and the surrounding areas. I saw varying degrees of friends in varying environments while consuming varying levels of alcohol. And I enjoyed all of it. I had conversations about bodies, about fears, about secrets, about the importance of friendship and more specifically the relationships I have with the company I was currently keeping. It felt open and honest and good. The majority of my time was split between two individuals that have somehow, in two totally different lengths of time, impacted my life forever.

I drove an hour outside of the city to a town I had only heard about once on the internet and then once in a text message about where to head to see this friend, who is relatively new in my life. We went to yoga, we made food (okay he made it, I ate it), and he sang songs that dug out things in me I had buried so deeply that nine words in tears started streaming down my face. He changed my perspective on a plethora of things, the way I looked at words, at myself, my ability to vocalize my feelings towards people. In the morning we walked to the beach, played catch, and rolled down grass hills (which is a hell of a lot scarier now than it ever was as a child). Our moments spent together were the most adult and most childlike and rested beautifully in the venn diagram of life. To me, this was perfect, and every second was experienced completely sober.

I headed back to my temporary home in downtown San Francisco. I think it’s technically downtown, though sometimes I think it’s the financial district, or maybe it’s not, but the truth is the only thing that really matters is it’s walking distance from sushiritto and home to one of my best friends. We’ve known each other since high school, when we sat side by side in a geometry class taught by a man who thought a rubber chicken was funny. Our friendship has involved drinking and a lot of it. There’s been a trip to urgent care, several missteps, and a broken candle at a bar that I once tried to slide across the table to him. We’ve had drinks to celebrate, drinks to cope, and drinks to drink; this trip wasn’t any different. About three drinks in to the night I felt myself starting to get sad, I started to get in to my head, I started to resent my current acts of consumption. I was living in this compare and contrast moment of the past 24 hours that was playing on some big screen viewable to only little old me. I craved the way I felt when my body was completely present, the feelings of tumbling down a hill without any grace, the clench of my teeth and heavy breath before I say something that makes me uncomfortable. By the fifth drink I stopped caring. The night carried on and some of the details were lost; upsetting.

The next morning I drove alone, essentially in a straight line, for about five hours. Any idea what that can do to your mind? The stretches of empty land, and cows, and signs for gas companies I’ve never heard of were replaced by that big screen again. I reflected on how the real me, the girl that loves challenges, the outdoors, playing catch, got so caught up in another easy evening of libations. How that side of me feels like a lie. How it isn’t fair to a best friend to not remember every detail, every word of brilliance, every bite of a burger that you two demolished side by side. How I know that there is a genius in both of us that we swallowed down, instead of sharing. How we explored more bars than we did ourselves. How in all of these hours of consumption, I really wasn’t producing anything, and I loathed that. I need to pause here – this strand of sentences seems to shallow the depth of my friendship – this is not the case. This friend of mine, he’s one of the most self-motivated individuals I know. He’s talented and inspiring and irreplaceable. That’s the root of the problem here; it’s just that our moments together in life, now in almost opposite coordinates of California, are limited, and I should have been more present. Now don’t get me wrong, not every experience needs to be one full of self-exploration and analyzation, but that’s a big part of who I am. And I feel like I’m losing it.

 

And that’s where it started. And so it begins.

 

Days one and two have already passed and they’ve been easy. Epiphany one: I’m realizing, now, that drinking really is a habit of mine; one I do without thinking and with the effort of what seems like a natural reflex. A beer seems like the perfect counterpart to my tv show, wine the soulmate of the first step inside home from work, whiskey the wonderwall to my writing. But I’ve broken up with all of them. I’m not trying to give myself any credit here; I’ve not really seen anyone, I’ve not ventured out of my own space. I’ve spent the past two nights working late and bailed out on drinks on the honest to goodness truth that I was basically sleep standing (though I swore to myself I’d order a shirley temple had I powered through). But, as many of you know, my schedule is often busier than I’d like it to be and there is a jam-packed couple of weeks on the horizon. And you’ll be part of it if it feels right; all the realizations, sans libations.