Lingering in Doorways

What do they put in this drink? I’m serious. I know it’s probably something obvious and boring (water and high-fructose syrup, I looked it up), but come on. It’s scary addictive. They started stocking batches of Cherry Dr Pepper in the village mini-mart on New York street and so now I’m there almost every day, replenishing my ever-dwindling stock like a crackhead fiending for a hit. It’s a problem. I know it is, because I’ve tried to put myself on a cleanse and caved less than an hour in. I drink it during class, on afternoon walks, and at dinner parties where almost everything else is served. I have it no matter how late it is or how bad the weather, as proven last Friday when I braved both heavy rain and side-blowing wind to get my fix. I think my blood might be cherry-flavored at this point and possibly full of air pockets.

I tried putting my friends on, and the consensus is that though Cherry Dr Pepper is good, it is definitely not good enough to warrant this kind of reaction. It is exactly what it sounds like, a fruit-flavored soda, the canned, carbonated version of a convenience store Slurpee. Which is strange, because I don’t even really like soft drinks that much. I think the best way to drink Coke is flat with a cup full of ice. And yet I’d inject Cherry Dr Pepper into my veins if I could. I guzzle it down like a car does gas. This drink has me in a life-threatening chokehold, and I’m obsessed, fully, though I haven’t the slightest idea why.

Maybe it’s because though I don’t necessarily like soft drinks, I do love cherries. I like cherries on my milkshakes, and Ben and Jerry’s “Cherry Garcia” flavor. Maybe it’s because I love slushies, and when frozen I think these are an infinitely better version. Maybe it’s the hot August weather, the feeling of this long month drawing to a close, that makes me crave something that tastes like summer. Maybe it’s the ritual of it, the semblance of routine, because craving it gives me somewhere to go. I like taking the long way home, popping my earphones in and going for that two-minute walk, like the taste of my drink with outside air. Maybe it’s the only time in the day I feel actually awake.*

*This was during one of the major lockdowns slash flu outbreaks of 2022 and so I really didn’t get out of the house much.

Or maybe it’s this. Maybe it’s that the first time I try it, I’m seventeen and in California for the summer. We get cheeseburgers and a chicken pot pie and a supersized cherry Dr Pepper, midnight fuel for whatever movie we’ve got on that night. Maybe I’m seventeen and I don’t just love life, I’m in love, obsessed with it. There’s an earnestness in me I know but can’t explain, a hunger, a want. Maybe I’m with Dad for the summer, and the summer is perfect, but the perfect is temporary. I stay up until one on the pull-out couch, sip my supersized Cherry Dr Pepper, and dream of what’s to come. Senior year is still some weeks away. I’ve been thinking about film school. My Moleskine is filled, and they’re ideas I love, things I’m excited about. And I feel almost invincible, somehow. Like there’s this big plan I don’t know much about but trust I’m a part of. And I guess that’s what Cherry Dr Pepper reminds me of — it tastes like youth, like a specific brand of youth I’m not a part of anymore. Like a youth I tasted once and loved and then never had again, not until two weeks ago, at 8 PM on a Monday, in a small mini-mart on the corner of New York street.

Something’s different about these past few weeks. I can feel it, see it even: a sudden break in the pattern. Maybe it’s too soon to tell, but I’ve started to feel like myself again. Like that one Mars Argo song slash Tiktok trend that goes, “I think she’s coming back.” I’m becoming more in touch with things I’ve lost for a while, like old friendships and passions. Reconnecting with a part of myself I fully thought was gone forever.

Is this what healing looks like? Is it movie marathons and get-togethers and a good, healthy cry? Is it an old jazz album, a walk around the park? Is it cherry Dr Pepper? I’m happy that I get this chance to figure it out for myself. That this new eagerness means I haven’t given up. I’m doing and dancing and dreaming again, making moves, finding new things I like. I feel like a different person somehow. I feel alive.

I hope this is what the rest of year 20 will be like. I hope it’s got even more of these second chances. I hope that I get new experiences and old ones too, more dormant parts of myself that I finally get to revive. Because if the future has more in store than I thought — if it is as good and surprising as I used to think it would be — then it tastes a little like cherry Dr Pepper. I hope, and I hope, that I can’t get enough.