This is no ordinary love.

Fridays are terrible days to send out a newsletter, statistically speaking. But I woke up this morning with the oh so familiar February longing in my chest that I had to finally capture it, so here is a stab.

I wish I could cast a central blame, how uncomplicated would that be? I wish I could just write it off as seasonal and yes, Spring has given us a kiss behind the bleachers but can’t quite commit, that’s part of it. And that my brother has a birthday in February and for a few months on paper, we’re only a year apart but his mental illness has created a chasm between us that I’m not enough of a grown-up to face. Yep, part of it too. And the Hallmark holiday that I’d love to just dismiss with a PPHHHHTTTThhh, but what is actually true is that I love love and if VDay was part of the pie chart, that slice would be large enough to make one sick.

I remember my first awareness of acute longing. It was over unrequited love. I know, how exceptional. I would crawl to the very bottom of my bed under so many blankets, I’d have to make a portal for the cool breeze of Air Supply to drift in off my record player: I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you. Looking back, I think I was more committed to indulging the longing than the boy. It was then that I felt connected to the most sublime part of me.

I have a little theory about this (and you may only connect to this if you study the Enneagram). Like I honestly just downloaded this in the shower. I wonder if the desire to indulge that, whatever that thing is that makes you feel juiced, we are activating our repressed center. In lay-speak, as an Enneagram 7, I’m disconnected from feelings the most. I have to GO there. Music does it. In fact, it was one of my most cherished drinking activities and why I had my claws in it for so long, even as the trail of destruction grew to heights insurmountable. Music + booze was the vehicle that drove me to longing and longing = feelings. Never good at math, but I’ve been calculating that equation for most of my adult life.

In February, my longings are so consuming, I’m afraid they will swallow me whole. And that is what it all comes down to: fear. Because I no longer use alcohol as the trigger, I think if I allowed myself to have a February in July and another in say, October, I wouldn’t be so afraid of the longing and the emotions it forces me to feel. I need to think about this (haha, says the Enn. 7).

Explorations of longing are part of this new direction I’m moving in 2023 that I keep alluding to. I’m not trying to be a secretive asshole, it’s more of an aesthetic change and more singular focus than anything and it’s taking forever to get it just right. What to do with this longing? I make. I spin it into truth and beauty and art and without really knowing why I was being called to this reinvention this year, I guess I’m onto myself now.