Tomorrow I Will Be 15 Years Sober

How do you define yourself?

Favorite Self Portrait of 2024, CONTAX T2 Portra, Stopping On Figueroa

I have been thinking a lot recently about definition. About who I am, rather than what I am. Yanking a hairbrush through my daughter’s hair, this morning gloomy, the heat running underneath it, a pimple on my chin, making me think, earthquake weather, even though there is no such thing. That when my daughter’s hair is brushed it looks like my husband’s mother’s, and my paternal grandmother’s. Silky and thick, strands of gold. And I love being reminded of these two women. One of them still here, the other left in my father’s blue eyes. How there are moments when my daughter looks so much like my mother and it’s shocking, the same way someone who has known my mother can stand at the door after I’ve opened it and say “oh my god you look so much like Nancy.” Which is a dream, but not entirely true, though she and I have the same eyes, the same cheekbones, the same legs. I’ve been thinking a lot about the stories we tell ourselves. The cat dragging a ribbon down the hallway. About the stories I have told, the way I have entered a space over and over, begging to be defined, the way I can allow someone to define me at my worst and think it’s true, rather than turning away. I think I have been thinking about definition, because I have been thinking a lot about my teenage years, and the things I haven’t said. The things I would still like to say. That I find myself treading in a poem that is not working for fear of what needs to be said. That a lot of my past comes up around this time, because I will be 15 years sober tomorrow, and I never thought I’d live this long, even though that’s what I’ve asked for, that I continually pray to live forever, even though I am annoyed by my body, how I am no longer in my youth, my hips widened from birth, my hair coming in so gray. What whiplash motherhood has been. I’ve been thinking about definition because I have been thinking about how I would like to spend the next 15 years. What stories can I let go of? What time can I find for completion? For grounding? For meditation? What can I stop seeking? What can I begin to say? Here I am, and here is good, and I know what I am doing, I know who I am on the inside - still barefoot, still running down a highway, still stopping just long enough to take a picture of the rising sun.