2013. a year in review?

I guess I do conform as well to the society expectation of self-reflection on this here January 1^st. I don’t know if it’s just the date, or the hype surrounding the date, or that I like to self-reflect, or that I spent my evening with my longest and best friends, who remind of a time and a place ago that I had put behind me, and thus had to confront partially  this evening. Those people. Those memories. While it constantly and consistently feels so long ago, it feels so new still too.

I often encourage people to read God’s Debris by Scott Adams. Because it touches on the odd phenomenon of dejavu/dejanew? Hard to explain. But the gist is that – sometimes you’ll hear a song on the radio and it will remind you of someone you haven’t thought about in a very long time, and then all of a sudden that song is everywhere. Then all of a sudden that person, in some shape or form, comes back into your life. And how that song could have been on the radio in passing a hundred times before that day you heard it and were triggered into that memory, but until you’re forced to pay attention to that sign, until you’re looking for it..it almost always goes unnoticed.

I guess that’s how I feel. With yesterday and today, and probably tomorrow. I guess everything is in the forefront for whatever reason. And it’s making me reflect.

2013. what did I do? What didn’t I do.

Early in the year, in the best way possible, I turned 30. Surrounded by nearly every friend I have in Edmonton I spent the evening drinking in excess. 30 shots of burt Reynolds. Not counting the free bottle of wine I got at dinner or the drinks I had prior to starting the challenge. In my 20’s, or just the day before depending on how you look at it, I would have woken up shaking my head at my lousy and awkward attempts at being funny or coy or charming. I would wake up feeling shame and regret and attempt to stay in bed for a week wrestling with my demons only to emerge however long later to see that the world didn’t change in my absence, and that my shame and self loathing were almost entirely unjust. But the next day, I woke up feeling happy. I drank a bottle of water, I took a few Tylenol and I went upstairs and outside to be greeted by my friends with hesitation. As if they were trying to gauge me and how I felt after all that booze. I smiled. Great. I’m great. My resolve, I thought inside my own head before trying to reiterate it to them without sounding like a horoscope, is that that was it. I’m done now. I don’t need to wake up hating myself anymore. I don’t need to get that drunk ever again. Hell, I don’t even need to drink anymore if I don’t want to.

I hate to think that a day can change someone so drastically. That a 24 hour period where, before I was 29, and after I’m 30, can have such a fundamental impact on someone that it causes them to completely alter the way they think and feel about something that – for the better part of my life – has controlled and nearly ruined me.

And it’s not like I spent hours pondering and reflecting and searching for that resolution. I just woke up knowing that I was no longer that girl who got blind drunk, got angry, got hurtful towards people she loved and most of all, hurtful towards herself. I just woke up and I wasn’t that person anymore.

So I turned 30, and with it I turned into a different person that I can’t hardly recognise in comparison to who I used to be. We’re so different that it’s almost like invasion of the body snatchers. With way less gross things latched onto my head.

February found me in my new career. I jumped ship from the business I helped create and build and moved into something totally unfamiliar. Totally out of character, and I loved it. I spent the better part of my year learning and growing and learning some more. I was left stranded in unfamiliar territory, and rather than panic and remove myself as I so often have done in the past, I ran at the unfamiliar head on. And it was the best decision I ever made. I’ve never been happier at a job. I’ve never been as successful. Never as praised and never as valued. I found a home inside those walls. A home which, in the next coming month, will see me take another giant leap forward towards the ceiling. Past the ceiling. Through those barriers and boundaries and beyond.

I spent the summer working and enjoying it. And what little free time I had I spent in the company of the two best friends I’ve ever had. The two people who pulled me back from the brink of despair time and time again. Who saved my life over and over. I cherished every moment I could sneak away and spend with them. I still cherish every moment that they allow me to be in their lives, because without them, I’m not the person I want to be. Without them, I’m still just that scared angry messed up addict of anything who didn’t love herself and didn’t care if she lived or died. My summer was spent falling in love again, with my friends, with myself, with life and with the people I had long neglected to love because I was too stupid to see what was good for me. I traveled all over alberta. Some for work, some for play, some for no good reason whatsoever, except that I wanted to see what Banff looked like at night. It was also in that time that I moved, twice. And settled into my own place for the first time in two years. A place where I was finally able to have my cat live with me. Having a life that depends on me was something new. Being responsible for something so completely, was new. New and scary and exciting. And when I crawl into bed at night, and she puts her paw on my face and drools and purrs I can’t imagine ever living without her ever again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now, but no one in the history of the world will love anything as much as I love my stupid cat.

I traveled all over everywhere. Seeing mexico for the first time, marking those things off my bucket list. Clapping to hear the bird noise reverberate back at chichen itza, one of the seven wonders of the world. Walking down the beach barefoot listening to live music and watching the shore line disappear under the waves. Walking at the bottom of the ocean. Meeting new people, seeing new things, falling in love with every piece of it. Living. Really living.

2013. I can’t imagine a year being any better. But the reason behind all that, the reason I was able to look back today at it and be so happy for every piece of it is because, in 2013 I finally resolved all my anger towards the previous year. I finally let it go. Let myself go away from it. I took a breath and said forgive. Move on. Be ok. I could say it was easy. But it wasn’t. I didn’t get to wake up one day and just realize, hey you know what. People do things. Sometimes shitty things. Sometimes shitty things TO you, but that’s on them. It’s not on you. It’s not on me. What’s on me now is who I am, and who I want to be. And see for myself the person I was who made the mistakes I made, that made the choices I made and for what reason and resolve to be better. No, I didn’t wake up and just know that even though the way things happened sucked, they happened because they had to. Because everything has a breaking point. You bend and put pressure on something or someone for long enough and it will snap. It will splinter apart and there it will be. Broken. You can get angry, and I did. Boy did I. you can get angry and spit venom and hatred and be the martyr to your own story. But what good does that do. Everyone needed a scape goat, someone to blame. If that’s me, that’s me. I can’t change how people see me. How they saw me then, or if they will ever see me again for the person I am and have become. I can’t determine that for anyone but myself. I’m happy to be of some use if it means people are happy themselves. That they have secured their spot in the world and flourished. Because despite my anger then, I have none now. I only have peace and understanding and wishful thinking for the future. For their future. But mostly for mine. Harbouring anger, that’s no way to live. That’s no way to think about people. Because you never stop caring about people. Even if you try. You never even stop caring about them less. This is where the full circle of writing indicates that I write the next sentence to be something like “you just do this, and it makes total sense and ends things on the perfect note” but truthfully, it’s not the end. And even if it was, nothing is perfect. Even if we glued those broken splintered pieces back together, it will never be the same. And maybe that’s the point. To never be the same.

2013, you’ve found me gracious and contemplative and at peace with myself. I thank you for that. I look forward to seeing what 2014 has in store.