four days a week. almost every week this year.
I’ve added up the minutes — over 3,000 of them so far — in the recovery support group, in the chair across from my therapist, in the waiting room at the clinic with its flickering light, the hum of an old vending machine, and an odd assortment of magazines no one ever seems to touch.
some days, I don’t think I’ll hold on. but somehow, I do. minute by minute.
the days add up, accrete like lines in a notebook, like growth rings in a tree. like proof that I’m still here. better than the lines I chased, desperate to feel nothing.
recovery is hard. harder than I imagined. but there’s a quiet strength in me now. and I’m learning to stand up straighter in it.
Easter is just hours away.
mom and abuela are already in the kitchen, filling the house with the familiar smells of bacalao and sweet torrijas, humming saetas, deep songs. they believe in ritual — in food that brings memory back to the table, in customs that stitch the past to the present. in love that shows up, year after year.
Easter is about trials. about sacrifice — the kind that empties you. the kind that feels like being alone in a garden at night, white-knuckled and begging for an easier way out.
but there isn’t.
recovery is like that for me, quiet and messy. it’s showing up when you’d rather disappear. it’s relearning how to be back in the world after everything blew apart. I’m still figuring out how to keep going. some days I don’t know how to begin, but I try anyway.
and in between the many minutes, new songs have come to me — like lilies pushing through the cracks, stubborn and tender. I don’t know how they’ll land, or how it’ll feel to let them out into the world. I only know they’re here now, and that matters. I’ll begin to share them in May.
quiet things, fragile things. hopeful in the way new things always are.
cookie nieves 
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