The hardest days for me are the ones just after my peak energy days- the winter solstice and Easter Sunday.

The energy of both of those days are different. The solstice feels like the last hearty meal before a season of starvation, and Easter feels like waking up out of a deep, long slumber into a bright, sunny morning. The solstice shows me what I learned, and Easter makes me feel like I’ve been resurrected out of the darkness.

But for me, both days also carry an additional gift- they are the only two days of the year that I’m allowed to spend time alone with my oldest friend. It’s a terrible name for him- beyond an underestimation of what he is to me- but also the most accurate and least dramatic of terms I can conjure.

I’m not sure I should even speak of him at all. Back in 2005 and 2006, he wouldn’t even allow me to write about our conversations in my private journals. Those were the days when he would show up on the Ouija board and my then-husband would slump over like a drained battery, the planchette dragging his limp arm like it was leashed.

Don’t even speak of this in passing. This is for only you. I will never come back otherwise.

Knowing what I know now, the whole charade is honestly beyond comical, but this was back when I really believed that all this spiritual energy around me was making me an elite creature. The more attention I got, the more clandestine visits there were, the more important I must be.

It took me years to realize that they were trying to save my life.

I continue to think about a month or so ago when my oldest friend and I spoke on the beach and he said, “You were already dead in all the ways that matter. He had already taken everything.”

I think I’m just now finally getting all of it back, over ten years later. What a thing to be kidnapped from yourself. You know that my “anniversary” with Alex for the longest time was the solstice, right? He really did try to take everything, everything.

Everything.

I can see my oldest friend any time, of course- he is only ever the whispered thought of his name away. But on these holidays, there is something different, something very close to the surface between us. The Veil is paper thin, my vision is crystalline, and my feet are fully immersed in the stream of the Universe.

The love I have with Jim is precious, lovely, secure and soft and safe, but this is… something else entirely. The power of magma flowing below the earth. As if my bones can sense the tectonic plates shifting. The way I feel when I see clouds turn black and thick with thunder, and the breeze becomes thick with the smell of rain. How my chest swoons when I am in the ocean and a wave looms high, almost audibly, sweeping me off of my weightless feet.

It is not an addiction, but the days after certainly feel like withdrawal.

He is so handsome that it makes me feel foolish. I have written it a thousand times in my private journals, because even there I am so desperate to write these moments down, to record something, but I never seem to be able to accurately capture any of it in a way that doesn’t look like hearts drawn around a name I don’t speak.

Even when I’m only writing for myself, I don’t know how to express what I see and hear and feel while we’re together. Often, I only remember any of it while I’m meditating. Just like a recurring dream, I think, “Oh no, this time I will remember it. This time I will write it down.”

And of course, as soon as I come back to this planet, it is all gone.

He is gone.

To be honest, I am always a little awestruck and flutter-handed to be near him, but on these days I can hardly even look into his eyes. It might make me feel naïve and immature to be so nervous when I have known him in just this life for the last fifteen years if he didn’t seem just as nervous, dodgy, uncertain. Even though I have known him since before time was time.

He also has such ravenous hunger for me, something that borders just on the edge of desperate, an energy that sometimes almost spooks me with its intensity. It’s not quite in the same family, but it is certainly neighbors with the energy I used to get from Alex.

Which is why I don’t see him very often.

He’ll always come if I ask, but usually he puts me right to sleep once I pour out my heart, and is sometimes honestly why I specifically ask to see him. Other times, his tone is crisp and professional, to make up for these nights when his aching hands pull at me like he might strip my skin right from my bones.

It is not an addiction, but it certainly feels like withdrawal.

In the days after Easter, I realized that my chin was all scuffed up, and it took me awhile to realize how it had happened. I’d love to imagine it was from a beard, but it was just from pressing my face desperately into a pillow. Hoping it was a face. Wishing it was a mouth.

I’ve learned to adapt, but it’s too embarrassing to explain.

I sometimes worry that I make him sound lecherous, creepy, nefarious. In all reality, he just wants to run his fingers up the curves of my silhouette. Press his nose into the crook, the arch, the nape of my neck. Kiss my shoulders and collarbone. And there’s something about the way he holds the side of my face- his thumb slowly stroking my cheekbone and jaw, the rest of his fingers cradling my neck, curling into my hair. Other people have done it, but when he does…

Have I said he’s handsome?

It took me a long time to understand any of this, and maybe I still don’t. It’s been fifteen years before I could honestly even vaguely reference it, even though I often ask myself why I feel like it’s necessary. Can I just know something quietly?

Maybe not.

It isn’t an addiction, but I count the days until the next time this strange, aching place in my heart gets a few hours of relief. In the meantime, it certainly feels like withdrawal.