In the Year 2000 (and 5)

Can’t believe today is Christmas Eve. Doesn’t seem Christmassy at all – been too busy with school, plus it’s not cold – how can it be Christmas if you’re not all bundled up and blowing smoke into the chilly air?

So, the end of the year. Time for the famous round-up. Though it’s still not the end, and a lot can happen in a week. And yet:

This year has been a pivotal year. Experiences and evolution that should have been spread out over at least three or four years were crammed into one. I think it was the extreme dissatisfaction with the way my life was that made pure survival instinct kick in, and lead me to give in to dreaming, experimentation, sticking fingers into fires, taking chances, giving fear the boot.

It was probably the first time in my entire life that I decided to stop cribbing and whining and blaming other people and take responsibility for my own life. This sounds rather grand, but as I said it seems to be just survival instinct taking over and was not like an enlightening under the Bodhi tree situation. Because, I think, if I had continued the way I was, I would definitely have died of non-stimulation and its resulting depression. In fact, I was already only half alive.

I put myself in situations that I would have previously run away from, faced confrontation, gave in to passion.

I fell in love. The Laila-Majnun kind of love, the ‘he can do no wrong’ kinda love, the ‘I can’t read cos your face keeps floating on the page’ kinda love. Blind love. Stupid love. Childish love. The ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you even though I have only known you two weeks’ kinda love. And for the first time in my life I experienced rejection – total and complete. Led to a complete self-assessment and re-evaluation. Made me a lot harder than I was.

I broke out of a marriage that had never been one. I was strong enough to hurt people, good people, because I simply had to. There was no other solution.

These two experiences, leave me at the end of 2005, very very wary of love.

I dealt with a lot of family baggage, at least in my head, and have forgiven and let go of many grudges.

I am now in the situation that I always wanted to be in, and find myself constantly battling creative self-doubt. Hopefully this will not continue too far into the new year.

I have been able, after eleven years (taking the age of realization to be sixteen) to talk openly to people (of course a very select few) about childhood troubles and current fears. This has helped to shed many of them. Thank you thank you thank you for your patience and love.

I no longer wake up depressed every morning. Something that was the norm for a long, long while.

And for the first time ever, the rounding up of a year does not leave me with regret and I do not feel the need to make up resolutions and maps/plans for the coming year.

Let all my years be like this one.