This Year's End

2018 was quite a personal illustration of the entire spectrum of human emotion. From incalculable joy to sobering grief, this year was way too much too many times.

My heart is heavy as I recall all the loss this year held. Fractured relationships. The death of my mother's cousin Larry earlier in the year, and my former PHC classmate Bre just a few days ago, both of which were sudden and awful and inexplicable. The death of pets. The anniversaries of other loved one's deaths came around again and hit hard. I am not unfamiliar with death, and it never gets easier - if anything, it breaks my heart harder each time.

Then there's the stress of feeling my body aging and learning pain is the new normal. Mental exhaustion trying to find a balance between responsibility and enjoying life and usually failing. Emotional breakdowns born out of frustration that the world is so unkind to those who feel everything a little more acutely than those around them. Life is hard and it hurts. I've made a lot of mistakes and haven't been able to fix them all.

But this year has also had many blessings that were unexpected and so thrilling.

The family tree started growing new branches. I got to travel to the country my family is from and connect with roots I didn't know I had. An old friendship became a new love I am so thankful for which has made me feel appreciated and respected and understood in a way I never thought I'd experience. Co-workers showed support and love through their kindness and generosity and patience. Friends invested time and love into my life and reminded me that being goofy and screaming loudly at high speeds is good for you. Family is more than who is your blood, it is who mutually puts in the effort to be there for you and include you even when it's hard and impossible or inconvenient.

It has not been an easy year at all. But life isn't supposed to be easy. It tests us, challenges us, and gives us opportunities to do better than we have before. Every day we get on this earth is a gift to try again, and take a chance to ask that question. The answer may surprise you.

An entire year isn't defined by whether at 11:59 p.m. on December 31st the good times outweighed the bad. It's what you do with the sum of it that matters.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions. I think they're a lame excuse to delay doing the thing you know you should've already been doing for weeks. However, I do see more clearly a few things I want to change based on these last few days of 2018.

Life is not guaranteed. I have had an ache in my chest since Friday as I have felt so much more keenly the brevity of time together on this earth. Quite literally, you never know when the last time you'll see someone is. I want to remember to look around and appreciate who I have while I still have them. I'm going to take more pictures of the people I love. Spend more time with them, even if it's in silence. Make more conscious efforts to follow-thru and visit people, or grab coffee, or just catch up with someone I haven't talked to in a while. I was not close to Bre, but her death has been a wake-up call that the life we have could be over without any warning, with no chance to reconcile and say goodbye. The material things are irrelevant. It's the memories made, even if some day you don't remember all the details of what you did with that time, you'll know it was together and it mattered.

If the past 26 years of my life is any indication I anticipate 2019 has its own vast set of lessons in store for me to fumble through. I'm hoping for a little more gracefulness than I exhibited this year, but I suppose progress is the goal even if you trip and face-plant first before getting up, brushing yourself off, and taking another step.

For The Curious Minds

Some of you may have noticed strange things happening in my life over the last few months. What's funny to me, is that so many of these happenings overlap and intersect and share similar traits with each other. A few of them are just so unique any specific detail would give it away. I've decided that for the most part, I'm going to share bits of a few of them in this post. For my sake, as well as the people they involve. I don't want to diminish the importance of the feelings, but my feelings have been beyond tangled and complicated, so my thought processes are still trying to get straightened out. It wouldn't be true to the experience to only share about them in isolated compartments. Nothing was, and nothing is completely separate from each other. Our lives bleed into each other and back again and again until we can't tell where each story began, or if it has truly ended.


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With you, I started to feel wanted. That feeling was a foreign sensation. I couldn't keep my insecurities from attacking my fledgling joy like a virus. I'm so sorry that as I started to attach to you my own brain attacked the feelings that were trying to take root in my heart.

I'm sorry I haven't unlearned all the years of fear and distrust and paranoia. My life lessons look a lot like perpetual disappointment due to my own high hopes being stacked too tall upon a foundation of 10 second promises. I'm sorry that my fingers are venomous tongues. I'm sorry the words I write can cut you. I'm sorry that my brain assumed you even think about me at all. I'm selfish and condescending and mean. I have anger at the world and my past that manifests in self-sabotage and loathing. I am afraid and desperately trying to not be.

I'm sorry that as soon as I thought I could believe you may be genuine my old habits created a whirlwind of confusion around us. I wanted this story to have a happy ending, and instead I keep making plot twists happen I can't unwind. Funny how another plot twist showed up right when I thought we may have untangled the web.

I've watched the events unfold around me like an out-of-body experience. I just want to reach into the scene and stop the action and take it from the top. But real life and real people don't get the luxury of reset buttons. I was hoping you'd understand that my defenses weren't of my own choosing. They developed and imprinted themselves on my skin like the freckles on my shoulder. I didn't ask for them, but there they are. And when I get frustrated, they seem to multiply.

You told me I have a look that betrays me. I don't visibly blush, but I have a face that gives me away.
No one ever noticed that about me before. No one. It scared me. It scared me because that meant you were looking at me closer than anyone else had. And if people who didn't look closely at me before didn't like what they saw and left, how much more would you see that you didn't like?

We said that it was better this way - too much was going on in both of our lives - but I think you found an out and didn't want to tell me it was a sigh of relief for you to know I'd also found a reason to run. Hard to blame the other person when you're both hitting the panic button looking for a getaway car.

Maybe our problem wasn't the distance. Maybe our problem is that we know the distance was an excuse. Maybe the real problem was that maybe we weren't kidding at all. I don't think I was joking. I don't know, really. It's okay. I think you'll be happier without me. I'll find happier too, although as always I don't know where to look. I hope you two work it out. It sounds like you're supposed to. If you read this, I hope you decide to keep me in the loop. I always really liked hearing how your days went. I also hope you're not annoyed that I wrote and shared this. But, hey, you know me... I process best when I write it all down. And my memory is terrible, hence all the annoying times I saved conversations you would probably prefer I let disappear. But my little stash of memories makes me smile, and I go back to them when the days get to be too much. You were comfortable and still are.

I kind of love knowing we share a bizarre and random piece of history together, though. Somehow you were a little more real to me than some people I've held hands with or kissed. I liked you more than I told you. I still do. But in a kind of side-smirk and roll-my-eyes-when-my-friends-ask-what-happened kind of way. I'll always like you a good bit and a half. After all, I still wear the ring you gave me when I need to keep the creeps away. We were a good story.

How fortunate we both love telling stories.