Day four rolled in and I was feeling good. I hadn’t seen my best friend in over a week and that was actually the only thing that was causing me to feel bad. As I am not one to dwell in problems and seek solution to all things sad, we made plans for the evening to reunite. I powered through the work day and then straight to a work out class. I was feeling so good after that I decided to bike to her house instead of drive. I don’t know, I guess that whole endorphins thing is real.
The bike ride isn’t far, but also isn’t easy with jelly legs from an hour of air thrusting (this is a real workout class) and half flat tires. I burst through her door with probably a little more excitement than most people would deem reasonable. “You want a beer?!” were the first words out of her equally enthusiastic mouth. You guys, do you know what sounds really great after a sweaty bike ride? A beer. A beer sounds really fucking perfect. With a half out of breath voice I exhaled, “I’m not drinking” and collapsed down on to the couch. I don’t blame her for not knowing about sobrietygate 2k16; I hadn’t seen her in over a week and she’s not one to take to social media. In fact, if you look at her facebook it’s pretty much just a collection of posts I thought were funny and dumped there for her. I chugged down some tap water and explained all of the things.
She’s been around for a lot of my missteps, so she gets it. One day, the morning after aforementioned biggest regret, she showed up at my doorstep because she was worried about me. We had made plans to go to the beach that morning and I hadn’t answered the numerous texts and calls from her that had flooded my phone. She came to my house and I peeled myself out of bed, hung up in hangover and remorse. We spent the afternoon laying in the sand in silence; even the sunshine couldn’t get me out of the dark place I was in. She’s never judged me for any of it. And to be honest, that day, in that moment, I wanted to quit drinking forever. And it wasn’t just because of my mistakes. It was because I never wanted to have anyone to have to worry about me the way she did ever again. I’m not a child, which is exactly why epiphany number three is a little ironic.
i want to grow down to grow up.
As I biked home from her house I couldn’t help but smile. The wind was in my hair, I could feel the pedals in my soles, I felt the freedom of where your feet can take you. And, you know, the ride was downhill so that was pretty cool, too. I felt young again, free. I started thinking back on my childhood. Walking to the baseball fields, riding go carts, climbing trees. Planting sunflowers, burying time capsules, and making videos that I still think are funny to this day. You know what my favorite toy was growing up? Cornstarch mixed with water. My mom called it globbidy goo and it was off the chain. I thought about how pure those times were. How we had to use our imaginations and our skills, as limited as they were. How that didn’t stop us. How we had these ideas that were so big but felt so possible. How we’ve kind of lost that now. How we’ve become lazy and seek to recreate that joy, that freedom, that level of invincible through a substance instead of our souls. I want to create fun again. I want to skip rocks in a river, discover something new, believe in things bigger than me, things bigger than all of us. At some point we became friends with fear. Fear taught us that maybe our ideas were dumb, that being different would make things difficult, that we should dream big, but stay realistic. Where did our sense of wonder go? When did we begin to invest it in inebriants instead of ourselves? Did fear do this to us?
Maybe we need to start the distillation process on ourselves. Heat up the fires, the ideas, the dreams we had when we were young. Cool it on conforming to the cocktail; retire from the role of creature of comfort. Create the balance. Complete the process. Purify.
A cover of “my hero” blasted through my headphones and my smile went big again. I caught my shadow in my peripheral and my flannel was blowing in the wind like a cape. I laughed so hard I nearly lost my balance.
And as for balance, I feel like I’m finally finding it. Big things are on the horizon, I can feel it. My inner kid saw it with her own eyes.
the length of waves 