Sunday, December 30, 2012

Is It 2013 yet? How 'bout Now? How 'bout Now?


The year 2012 was 93% shit.  Well, no, maybe more like 89%.  87%.  Ok, I’m not sure the number.  It was a big number – way more than half the year.  More shit than non-shit, for sure.  But as we’re closing in on the END of this shitty, shitty year I’m doing the same thing that every radio station, news program, magazine and blog (and yes, this is still a blog!  I’m still a blogger!  You’re still a blog reader!  Blog, blog, bloggity, blog-blog!!!) and looking back on 2012 with an air of both retrospection and also “Holy shit am I glad this year is just about over.” Plus profound raspberry sound.

I started the year in love.  We all know how that worked out.  Except that you don’t really, and I REALLY don’t want to walk through it all again.  Let’s do a literary training montage recap of how the T.E. thing went, shall we?  You can pick your own montage music – personally I am hearing “The Final Countdown” by Swedish heavy metal wannabees Europe. 

…we were together… and then took a break… but decided to stay together (in hindsight I now understand that was because youth needs drama and I, at the time, needed the youth)… and then there was cruelty and pain and such melodramatic shittery as to be the seed of a vast garden of Spanish soap opera plotlines… then I did some grieving, followed by some “la, la, la, I’m totally over things but let us please not mention England.  Or their muffins, or James Bond or anything else Englishy, and in fact I’d like to pretend that the whole island sank ala Atlantis, except without the fancy mystery about it.”, followed by slinking back into the craphole for a nice, long soak.  (insert heavy metal inspirational “you can do it!” musical bridge here.  Possibly I’m punching an entire side of beef with bare hands.  Your call.)  I got a therapist (I did!  She’s awesome!  Henceforth we’ll call her Dr. Awesome!  Her accent is even more awesome than T.E.’s!)  She saved my sanity and gave me permission to not yet be over stuff even a whole 3 months after the break-up, plus some crazy talk about that being something I could have given myself permission to do, as if…  I escaped the dramatic shit chasm for a few more months and figured out how to be me again, but a me without a partner and I decided that was my future:  the solo rider riding solo without anybody else.  Solo.  I reconnected with T.E. to be friends, only to discover to both our amazement that while HE had been the one to end things, and HE had been the one to want to be friends, and HE had moved on to a new girlfriend only a month after the break-up, HE WASN’T OVER ANYTHING.  A typhoon of confusion, tears, false hope, confusion, gas, memories, that eye-muscle-twitch thing and confusion swirled around until somebody (big surprise – it was me) forced decisions to be made.  They got made.  And I was finally able to breathe again.  To know where to stand.  To know how to step way, way back.  And there the whole dramatic, astounding, fantastical, challenging, frustrating, inspirational and, ultimately, mistaken relationship finally and truly ended.  As does the training montage.  Musical flurry and fade-out…

As much as this year has been consumed in the never-ending shit storm that was “The Break-Up” there was, actually, other stuff.  I went down to a reunion of my high school drama group and reconnected with so many amazing people, many of whom I’d really thought lost from my life forever.  Say what you will about Facebook (god knows I have) but were it not for that little internet gem of networking we’d not have had that night, nor would we be planning to do it annually henceforth.  (love henceforth.  Don’t get to use it enough.  I’m gonna use it again soon.  Just you watch.)

I discovered the joys of injury!  (ok, injuries)  Some were due to gravity and the making me her bitch of same, ala exciting, ferocious bike wrecks.  Others were mysterious in origin, but expensive and tedious in recovery.  The most frustrating is a shoulder trouble that gets better or worse but never goes away completely.  During the summer I had to step away from my beloved Muay Thai training and jumped, instead, into circuit training and, as a result, I have a body!  I gave myself the gifts of calf muscles!  And biceps!  And lats!  I’ve got lats!  It’s very cool to have lats.  You should get some. 

And I lost some friends, and gained some others.  At some point I’ll write a post about losing friends.  It will either be about not understanding how that kind of thing works, or it will be about finally understanding it.  But not today.

As I bid a most enthusiastic GOOD BYE AND FUCK OFF, YA WANKER! to this shitstorm of a year I also look forward to 2013.  But I mean look forward to it a LOT.  I feel like I mostly took this year off from everything.  From being happy and setting goals and having achievements.  But as it wound down I began to feel those sparks popping back up.  I missed being a person rather than a bucket of shitty emotions and I started laying the groundwork for a new year.  A much, MUCH BETTER year.  Now I get that given this year I’m setting the bar ridiculously low, but that’s just because you don’t know what I’m planning for 2013. 

Stay tuned though.  It’s gonna be epic.