Sober Birthday Quotes

In a lightning-fast move, he placed both of his hands on the brick wall, caging me with his body. He leaned toward me and my heart shifted into a gear I didn't know existed. His warm breath caressed my neck, melting my frozen skin. I tilted my head, waiting for the solid warmth of his body on mine. I could see his eyes again and those dark orbs screamed hunger . "I heard a rumor." "What's that?" I struggled to get out. "It's your birthday." Terrified speaking would break the spell, I licked my suddenly dry lips and nodded. "Happy birthday." Noah drew his lips closer to mine; that sweet musky smell overwhelmed my senses. I could almost taste his lips when he unexpectedly took a step back, inhaling deeply. The cold air slapped me into the land of sober.

A disturbing thought hits me,"but then our only neighbor would be Haymich!" "Ah, that'll be nice,"says Peeta, tightening his arms around me."You and me and Haymich. Very cozy. Picnics, birthdays. long winters around the campfire retelling old Hunger Games tales." "I told you he hates me!" I say, but I can't help laughing at the image of Haymich becoming my new pal. "Only sometimes. When he's sober, I've never heard him say one negative thing about you," says Peeta. He's never sober!" I protest. That's right. Who am I thinking of? Oh, I know. It's Cinna who likes you. But that's mainly because you didn't try to run when he set you in fire," says Peeta. "On the other hand, Haymich ... well, if I were you, I'd avoid Haymich completely. He Hates you." " I thought that you said I was his favorite," I say. "He hates me more," says Peeta, "I don't think people in general are his sort of thing.

His lyrical whistle beckoned me to adventure and forgetting. But I didn't want to forget. Hugging my grudge, ugly and prickly, a sad sea urchin, I trudged off on my own, in the opposite direction toward the forbidding prison. As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of everything. I felt the wall of my skin; I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this world was over. The Tide ebbed, sucked back into itself. There I was, a reject, with the dried black seaweed whose hard beads I liked to pop, hollowed orange and grapefruit halves and a garbage of shells. All at once, old and lonely, I eyed these-- razor clams, fairy boats, weedy mussels, the oyster's pocked gray lace (there was never a pearl) and tiny white "ice cream cones." You could always tell where the best shells were-- at the rim of the last wave, marked by a mascara of tar. I picked up, frigidly, a stiff pink starfish. It lay at the heart of my palm, a joke dummy of my own hand. Sometimes I nursed starfish alive in jam jars of seawater and watched them grow back lost arms. On this day, this awful birthday of otherness, my rival, somebody else, I flung the starfish against a stone. Let it perish.

By the time my fortieth birthday came around I’d been dry for almost six months. I was sober as a judge and just about as boring.

Aimee saw more of the world before her first birthday than most people do in a lifetime. I just wish I’d been sober for more of it. I was there physically, but not mentally. So I missed things you can never do over again: the first crawl, the first step, the first word. If I think about it for too long, it breaks my heart.

I watched my best friend fall in love with the same girl a million times in the same minute.  She had vivid eyes, a warm smile, and a streak of purple in her hair.  They were too drunk to notice I was watching; I was too sober to not realize what was happening.  Someone kept cutting off the oxygen in the room every time their faces got close.  But I knew if it were for just a few more inches, they would have kissed.  I also knew that it was because of the fact that she had a boyfriend that they didn't.  Even I could feel his heart racing as she licked off the birthday cake icing off his right cheek.  I saw his eyes light up; it was much more than the effects of inebriation.  There was suddenly a different kind of gravity present in the room.  And I then I realized: The same forces that bring two people together are the same ones that pull them apart.  But I knew from the way he looked at her.  I knew what he felt.  I knew how much she meant to him.  And in that moment, I finally understood.  Because that's the exact same way I look at you.  (I have learned to see gravity; it is the colour of your skin.)

High school basically continued with bouts of her getting drunk and then stopping for a day. There was not one major moment or birthday celebration during which she could remain sober. I learned how to plan my joy. I would front-load my birthdays with breakfast activities or plan to be with her for only the beginning of an event. Then I would go off to be with friends and know that that would be the last I would see of my mother’s real facial expressions.

Once I accepted my extravagant mendicancy I stumbled upon the sober, intelligent little boy I had once been. This was the kid with the sweet smile and an interest in all sorts of things, the boy with brushed hair and cloudless eyes, the child so whole he could forget himself: the birthday boy.

It had taken Nick most of his life and mine, but he’d finally quit drinking. After he got sober he began to send me birthday cards—signed with many Xs and Os, pink and flowery with effusive definitions of wonderful daughters. He’d send me these cards even though I had never been a wonderful daughter to him. Did he know from my mother that I could be when I wanted to? Or was it just the kind of magical thinking he and I had always been so good at—conjuring up a story and believing it in an attempt to make it true?

You don’t have to be here,” William offered with his trademark quiet solemnity. I shook my head but kept my eyes fixed on the closed doors at the end of the hall. “No. I wouldn’t miss it.” Would rather be home in my slippers watching Judge Judy, sure, but duty calls. That was my style of party these days. Throw in a slice of Battenberg and some Werther’s Originals and I could go wild on a sugar high. But no, today was William’s birthday, so I was going to try and keep my grumpy old man behavior to a minimum. Try being the operative word. No promises. My teammate, and the guest of honor for this particular party, tugged on the sleeve of my suit jacket and brought us to a stop. “Hey. Seriously. You’re eighteen months sober.” “Has it been eighteen months already?” I stroked the stubble on my chin and cracked a grin. “Time flies when you’re killing house plants.

Lo,” I breathe. He raises his head barely to meet my expression, and I see how reddened his eyes have become. I’ve seen him at his lowest point in life. I’ve watched him get sober and watched him relapse. I’ve carried him, barely alive, in my arms. He’s seen me shed tears after the birth of my daughter. I’ve seen him smile after the birth of his son. We’ve been through two weddings, five of his birthdays, even more holidays and trips around the world. There is never a dull moment in the company of Loren Hale.

We, by contrast, have a risk of death which doubles every eight years. This doesn’t start out so bad: aged 30, your odds of dying that year are less than 1 in 1,000. However, if you keep on doubling something it can start small but, eventually, get very large very quickly: at 65, your risk of death that year is 1 percent; at 80, 5 percent; and by 90, if you make it that far, your odds of not making your 91st birthday are a sobering one in six. There is some evidence that this relationship flattens out after the age of 105 or so, meaning that these exceptionally long-lived people might have technically stopped aging—but, with odds of death around 50 percent per year by then, they might wish it had flattened out slightly sooner.

It comes down to this: if I do not lose weight, I shall die; if I do not curb my drinking, I shall die; if I do not take more exercise, I shall die; and, according to that ghastly inflatable contraption that measures your blood pressure, if they don’t get me a burst artery will. Sobering news on the eve of a chap’s fifty-eighth birthday; especially so when Daddy didn’t live to see his fifty-ninth.