New Year's Eve

The last twenty minutes of last year were spent frantically trying to scribble on a piece of printer paper aspects of myself I wanted to leave in 2018. I wrote down ugly little parts of myself I wanted to burn away and proceeded to the kitchen sink to light a match. After much persistence and several attempts to hide muffled coughs and choking, the paper did not burn. I resolved to drop it in the sink which I filled shallowly with water. It became soggy and smeared and the black sharpie ink bled, but I could still see the words through the parchment thin paper. The procrastination, self-pity, and depression still stared somberly up at me from the murky sink. And I panicked.

At 11:47 pm I rushed back to retrieve another paper, scribbled more atrocities that I loathed and folded the paper into oblivion. I put the tiny paper in a teacup and threw in a match. This time,  I told myself,  this time it'll burn. It didn't burn. It smoldered and puckered, dancing away from one, two, four matches. I wheezed and opened a window. 

I had gotten into my mind earlier that same day, you see, that this was what needed to be done to truly leave the old year behind me. And of course it was the old way to ring in the new year with positivity and direction. 

At 11:55 pm I sat down with a third and final sheet of paper and tried to convince myself that this wasn't all some cosmic sign of impending failure. That it didn't mean no matter how diligent I was I'd never be rid of these evils that I'd written down to burn. Two partially singed, sodden papers sat in a ashen mess in the garbage as proof...  It was just a sign to try harder, that's right. I shied away from the feelings of self-loathing like a spooked horse when I thought of how effortless I had imagined burning the paper compared to how it actually played out.

Suddenly it was 60 seconds until a new year and I felt very alone. I felt small and insignificant and already a failure. But I decided that I would sit there anyway, watching the seconds tick by, and look this new year in the face. 

I blinked myself from a thoughtless, blank stupor and found the clock read 12:02. Wishing my husband a Happy New Year, I picked up the sharpie once more. I wanted to write down my goals- no not just goals, I wanted to write down my would-bes and will-haves. I did. And for a moment I was sad, but I couldn't understand why. Perhaps because of how big it all seemed in comparison to what I felt I could achieve. But I tamped that down quickly with a hard smack of determination. 

I sat down in the dark of my mess stricken bedroom and meditated in the quiet. Children asleep, husband away, and nothing but the thrum of the AC overhead. I stared into a single spot and chanted over and over again that I had a fire in my belly now. I am determined, I am motivated, I have willpower. 

I decided then and there I wouldn't float through life anymore as a lifeless husk of a woman seized by mild passion for life when people wish it of her. I no longer wanted to be. I wanted to find me, have me, be me. And I will. 

Namaste