Juice from an Orange in the Springtime

If winter was for irony and perversion, then spring must bring a whole new meaning to rotting fruit. 

This past month of my life has been overwrought with joy and calamity and blissful coincidence, with life and laughter and confusion oozing from every slight tear in the seams.  Turning 26 has catapulted me into a dizzying spiral, and I find myself looking for missing puzzle pieces at the bottoms of tequila sodas and shitty white wine. (They are not there, but I keep checking just in case). 

I’ve been wearing my 3 plaid skirts on a religious rotation, and running my poor thrifted ballet flats into the ground.  I miss my bus too frequently and endure insanely long galavants through the city. I secretly love getting off too early on the 24, calling a friend or my sister, and mostly figuring out my way to Valencia without using my phone. 

I started a new job which takes up far too much of my time but also makes

me feel alive and connected to my favorite neighborhood, and it’s 3 blocks away from my favorite park, and the free coffee and pastries are pretty much impossible to argue with. I am sleeping too little and saying yes to too much, winding up in skateparks eating Jack in the Box at 3am on a weeknight when I have work again in 3 hours. I am seeing shows and dancing to my friends’ DJ sets, and even managed to land a gig of my own.  

My heart hurts and glows and glimmers, pulsing and swaying at inconsistent rhythms much like the music I enjoy. It’s still a little too cold for my liking to swim in the ocean here but the sun has been shining relentlessly, beating down on my scabbed up arms and warming up my long hair that I may cut off soon. I’m tightly holding onto the love in my life until my knuckles are white, and even then I’m gripping a little bit more. 

I’ve been gnawing on the concepts of impermanence and novelty, though I think they're starting to make my teeth rot. I feel the most pretty under blue and orange and red bar lighting, crackling tiffany lamps and the drunken shine of old neon on my cheekbones. I’m letting myself smile with every muscle in my face, against every impulse to shy away or duck into darkened corners. I’m standing up straighter and uncrossing my arms, even when I am reminded of Joni Mitchell’s metaphor of feeling like a cigarette in the wind. 

Chatting up strangers feels far easier that it ever has, and even when I feel like I’m putting on a character of who I want to be it’s starting to feel a little closer to who I really am. I’m closing the gap between the dreams I had for myself as a little girl and the simple and mundane pleasures of the dreams I have for myself now.

One time, many years ago in a city I do not live in anymore, I sat outside of a person’s apartment who was not mine, crying over a glass of white wine and letting the belly laugh of a neighbor ring in my ear. In that moment I prayed for a new life, a better life. I yearned like a child on a carousel, letting the soft rise and fall of my carriage propel me in circles, without any sense of how to get off. I let myself feel my wanting without restraint, and the force nearly knocked me out. 

Many years later, I occasionally cry for that person who wanted so desperately to be loved. I mourn her dreams and her heartbreak, and carry them with me like little souvenirs into my new life (which I so deeply adore). I try to forgive her and while I’m not quite there, I let her be without constant berating. I try to hold without squeezing or letting go, try to find stillness in presence and detachment to outcome. I find comfort in daydreams and discomfort in uncertainty, although the latter is the only thing that’s allowed me to get off my high horse. 

I’m soaking up the love of my friends, the softness of the spring grass and the excitement of a city that is still new and shining to me. I’m trying to sit in my sadness while it finds me and let it pass when it’s time to go. I don’t know what to look for and still I’m trying to find it, but trying to give myself a little grace when I can spare it. The juice from my winter citrus feels like it may run out soon, but I’ll try and savor the last few drops.