It is half past ten p.m. and I am at home in my flannel rubber duck jammies and old navy fleece top, an earache, sore throat, and slight fever are my companions for this festive evening. My friends are out at parties for the most part taking place at one another's homes and friends of friends. I could have gone out, I could have sucked it up, drugged up, and put on a brave face going out for the last night of the year. However this year does not deserve to be waved good bye. I find that this year needs to be silently placed in a box on a shelf, and quietly allowed to pass.
There have been great moments, I learned to paint this year, I jumped off the top of a two story pontoon boat without being bribed, I have made friends that I think will be life long friends, and not those who weave in and out for a season, although I have made those friends too. And while the old adage of count your blessings always applies I think I am content to let this year end quietly.
In fact, the past week has been exceedingly quiet; Christmas with a friends' cats and me watching LOTR and Jane Austen movies, with the obligatory call to mom and grandpa. Then spending a few days in the silence of that house before returning to the singing and bass beats of my house. I do not write this for pity, I am happy that I have friends and family that love me and want to include me (although none of them know how I spent Christmas, until now) but the silence of my soul is what I crave at the end of this turbulent year.
I lost me this year. Lost who I was amidst a sea of sadness and depression that threatened to take my dreams. Lost my bearings for a belief that I thought I had found again, only to realise how easily I can wander away from my true love. I have struggled to be smarter than, wittier than, and quicker than those around me, only to see the bitch they see in return. I sense the questions when I do not do something that everyone around me thinks is the only answer only to see the disappointment in their eyes when I could not follow through.
I know myself well enough to know that resolutions are not to be kept. They are lovely thoughts that tend to be misplaced when the first round of things go wrong. If however, there is to be a goal outside the usual lose weight, pay off debt it is this; to remember who I am, to find her again, to love her just as she is, and remember I am loved, just as I am by the Creator and the one who dares to let me call him Abba.
