Dear reader,
First of all, thank you for reading. I’m writing to you from the Sonoran Desert. To be exact, I’m writing to you from gate A4 of the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where I’m currently listening to the American Airlines representative announce for the fourth time that they have overbooked the flight. Moments ago, a man walked up to the desk, laughing (due to the inability to cope through any other emotion) after she announced that his seat (9A) has a janky tray table and the entire seat will need to be removed from the plane before departure. And now the compensation for taking the red eye flight has gone up from $900 to $1,100.
I’ve spent the past four days here catching up with a few of my oldest and closest friends. After a brief mishap with our rental car, we managed to make it from the city to the mountains. We spent our nights in the hot tub, boiling like shrimp, pointing out constellations and rambling on about all the things there are to ramble about amongst people who have known each other through many phases of life. There was, of course, the annual American tradition of the Super Bowl to offer the usual distraction from reality. Which, this year resulted in everyone running to Google to ask “How old is Usher?” Also, shout out to H.E.R., because that guitar solo was phenomenal and I would love to see a black woman shredding a guitar at the Super Bowl every year. On top of that, we hiked and climbed, but most of all we spent an impressive amount of time admiring the way the quail squabble around the canyons between an infinite number of rocks and cacti.
Trips like this have a way of revealing their significance in ways you can’t predict. They shine a light on the importance, or rather the absolute necessity, of friendships. We’re older now, more “adult”, with our own stressors and our own grief. We’re at that age where you truly start to understand how precious of a thing a childhood is. We’re at that age where no one lives in the same town anymore, so getting together means plane tickets, and rental cars, and requesting days off from work. At some point we realized it had been nine months since we’d all been together, and we vowed not to let that become the norm. But every time we’re in each other’s company, with our rituals intertwined for a brief time, we get to meet one other in a new way. We get to see who must make a tea before bed and who would never consider such a thing. We see who needs to light a candle at the first opportunity. Who eats their eggs scrambled and who eats them sunny side up. We get to share books with each other and see who sneaks into the kitchen late at night to finish off the pint of ice cream we’d been sharing (surprise, it was me).
As different as we are now, we still lock eyes and see the same kid(s) we met over fifteen years ago. And on this trip, I was reminded of the importance of having people around who see you through your journeys. Between the four of us, over the past years we’ve had sick parents, sick pets, long (very long) distance relationships, marriages, breakups, new jobs, new partners, and several moves all over the country. Point being, life has happened. And in our towns that we live in, we each have friends and people we’ve grown close to, but what I think we all remember at times, is that no one can replace your oldest friends. And on top of that, no amount of FaceTimes or phone calls can replace a hug. I am INCREDIBLY grateful to still have such a great relationship with people I have known for so long, and I know this is not something that everyone gets, so I do my best not to miss a chance to acknowledge this blessing.
It’s no secret (at least in my friend group) that I’ve gone through a few breakups over the past couple of years, and as someone who is a deep feeler, each of these has affected me in ways I wouldn’t have anticipated. Somehow a bit more painful each time, but I remember hearing these things are supposed to get easier…right? Anyway, one night, while sitting with a friend in the kitchen, the house quiet, we were talking about love. She was reminding me how much she had struggled to recover from her own heartbreak after a relationship had ended, and how we talked and talked on the phone about it for months and I never thought she was broken or crazy. She reminded me of love’s necessity. That love is not optional. But when I’m alone in my bubble at times, it’s easy to lose sight of the hope I should have within my reach, so I inch into my fear of loving.
Because loving someone means they matter to us, and boy is it scary to let something matter. In Mary Oliver’s Bird she writes: “We grew into that perilous place: we grew fond.” And this is what it means to love something. Loving someone means that we’re increasingly unprepared for their absence in our lives, even if it happens decades from now (e.g. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking). And when we love someone, and they decide they can no longer return that love, or maybe even more painful, they decide they don’t love you at all anymore, or maybe even more painful, they decide the whole thing might’ve been made up to begin with, it hurts. It hurts! So much! I would take so many things over heartbreak. I wish I could keep anyone from that sorrow. But I cannot absolve myself from my role in this part of life. Because despite my best efforts, I too have been the heartbreaker, the world turner, the leaver, the monster, the manipulator, the toxic ex. I am not innocent, but I try my best to learn from the mistakes I’ve made so as to avoid their repetition.
“Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?”
-Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
I can’t remember where I read this, possibly in Bell Hooks’ All About Love, since that’s what I’m reading right now, but it was about our generation’s fear of love and intimacy, and I have to say, as an unquestionable lover, heartbreak has sadly added quite a bit of fear into my pot. Last year, in my journal, I had written a particularly memorable line to myself one day: “I am terrified by my capacity to love”. This is mostly due to the fear I (we?) have of embracing the pain of heartbreak again, because loving opens up that possibility. And as someone who loves, and loves vigorously, I see myself being particularly vulnerable to heartbreak. So when a friend asked me at dinner a few months ago, where I’d like to be in a few years I replied: “Not heartbroken.”
I have yet to learn how to not jump to love quickly, because I think there is no greater purpose in life than love and I think the women I have loved are unquestionably worthy of all of the love I’ve been able to give and so much more. But this vulnerability, this opening up to love, is like the way a dog rolls over on its back exposing its belly, becoming fully vulnerable in joy while exposing its most vital flesh. But for the potential pain, the potential heartbreak, I am admittedly not yet prepared to face again. Which means, for the time being, the sign at The Love Store is turned around to “Closed, We’ll Be Back When We’re Ready” or maybe “Closed, We’re Licking Our Wounds”. So I’m allowing myself this “lunchbreak” from romantic love in order to heal before opening up shop again.
But on this trip, as I was listening to my dear friend, whom I love so much, who I look at, knowing that I would do everything in my power to protect her from all potential pain large or small, I realized that she (just like my other friends and family) was giving me all of the love I needed. I realized that to the passerby, the sign read “Closed”, but my friends, who were already in the store with me only saw the side that says “Come On In, We’re Open. Stay For A While. Stay Forever.” I realized that as much as I’ve hopped onto the self-love train, that we still need the love from our people, and it doesn’t always have to be a romantic partner filling that void. Friendships matter. And they do not sustain themselves. We have to pour into them and commit to them just like romantic relationships, because when the romance is gone, we still need the love.
So as I have been in the desert the last few days, I have learned of the magic of the Saguaro cactus. Which over their lifetime can produce up to forty million seeds that may only result in one or two adult offspring. Of which the oldest may live up to three hundred years and stand up to almost eighty feet tall. I have learned of the way they sit still in the endless heat, growing little by little each year, surviving droughts and storing water when it sparsely arrives. They grow at such a slow rate that a ten year old Saguaro cactus may only be the size of your thumb. Many don’t grow arms until they’re roughly seventy-five and it takes them nearly four decades to begin to bloom a flower. So the lesson here, that I’ve taken from these ancient staples of the desert, and from this winter in my life, is that sometimes we’re the cactus and not the sunflower, that towers overnight. Sometimes we need to allow ourselves to grow at the rate we are and to claim the beauty in that process, slow as it might be.
As for now, you can find me in my garden. In the sunniest spot. Quietly tucked in between the songs of the House Finches. Taking my time. Growing. Storing love, from wherever it comes.
Today I want to share:
One of my favorite pieces of writing ever. A wonderful poem by Vievee Francis, I’ve Been Thinking about Love Again
A really special piece by the even more special Anna Fusco (aka Lordcowboy) about periods. Highly recommend subscribing to her newsletter, Unsupervised.
The journal notes of the amazing, late, sci-fi writer Octavia Butler:
A 3 hour (oops) Spotify playlist I’ve been curating over the past few months:
With love,
Zach
that was lovely Zach. Thank you for sharing.
I don’t know you personally but thoroughly enjoyed reading about your journey of finding the Source of love here in the big desert. Thank you for sharing :)