Hello Metaphor, Goodbye 2010

Tonight was my yearly night where it clicked that the year was nearly over. Quite honestly, 2010 was fucking horrible. I remember being a distinctly positive person and 2010 drove it out of me like an army into an unguarded city. I’ve come out on the other end feeling somewhat bitter and often stuck with a negative attitude that I simply can’t seem to shake.

Now, it would be some kind reverse hubris for me to say nothing good happened because there were certainly positives. Hell, I even recognize that my life is still really pretty good by most standards but I think that ignores a major piece of the human condition. My life may be fantastic by comparison to someone who experienced the true loss of a loved one or battled with disease but that’s not where our feelings and emotions come from. We build from our own experiences, not comparison with someone else’s. 2010 is a year where I lost the person who I loved most dearly and who was also my best friend. Not lost in the sense of death but lost in the sense that changed occurred and now what we had was irreversibly dissolved. The person who I saw as my best friend I will, in all likelihood, never speak with again. Within the context of my own personal experiences, this is the most tragic thing I’ve ever experienced. It couldn’t be more relevant in my feeling that I lost a year.

Time isn’t priceless. We put a value on it every time we work. I think we do this out of a sense of requirement though, or at least I do. It gives that time I do feel control over way more value. It’s not something to be wasted. That’s how I found myself stuck thinking, I had wasted a year of my life. Occasionally, it even bled into, “Carlene stole a year of my life” but the level of melodrama I needed to maintain to feel that way just wouldn’t stick. It locked me into this mindset where I could only see what I’d lost and made me feel desperate to take it all back. As you can imagine, not an overly mentally healthy place to be. Desperation isn’t one of those emotions that spurs you to make good emotional decisions or feel even remotely positive.

Books and movies love the New Year. It’s opportunity and shows up every 365 days. Clockwork. It almost feels like it was created purely for use by storytellers so they could have an opportunity to give main characters a chance a rebirth and recovery after dealing with the challenging part of the story. Metaphor was a concept I struggled with in high school but I find it pretty soothing right now. I like the idea of a semi-literal opportunity to put loss behind me and move onto something new. A clock can roll over to a new day just like it does every day but this time it means something more. Let go of mistakes and frustration and let yourself be what you want. Find a new path. Opportunity washes over your feet like water at the ocean but only if you let it.