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There are so many words i could use to describe 2010. Pain, stress, confusion, loss, poverty, suffering, chaos, the list goes on. But picking one single word to encapsulate the whole year is hard. I think there's really only one I can think of that is wholly applicable.
Change.
Of course, everything changes, even if only in the smallest of degrees. If it didn't, time would stop entirely and we'd be frozen, unmoving, on this spot for all of eternity. Heck, without change "eternity" is a meaningless concept. But that's besides the point. Change has been abundant for me, for those around me, in even more than just the past year.
In 2009, M and I packed up everything and moved 900 miles north to Bellingham, WA. No one thought we were insane, except my mother and his grandmother. Everyone else understood.
I never felt like I belonged in Cali. Never. Not once since moving to Berkeley from NYC when I was 5-ish did I even come close to feeling like California was "home." But neither was NY after doing the majority of my living in Cali for 25 years. And there was very little for me left in Cali. Everyone knew that. They could see it just as well as I could.
WA we originally picked for financial reasons. And then we drove up here. And I fell in love. It seemed an idyllic conglomeration of the NY childhood setting I'd longed for my whole life and the west coast mentality that had overwritten most of my world view.
So we came here, and life started falling into place. Things began to run smoothly, progress was being made, I started getting better, health-wise. Money was easier, and I was finally starting to feel content, if not happy, for the first time in... Well, ever. Even despite still being sick.
2010 started full of promise. I'd just been put on new medication that fixed me, almost instantly. And I could do the things I hadn't been able to in years. Most importantly, I could THINK again. Unfortunately, what started as such a positive, promising, uplifting year hasn't ended up that way. And being able to fully use my mind again has been a double edged sword. When things started crumbling, I could see it. I comprehended.
Too much has gone on to detail it all. But what started out as the perfect life, just me and M in our spacious (at the time) apartment, with little to no pressure, and plenty of freedom, has been turned on it's ear.
My son moved in with us bringing a whole other person's worth of emotional and social problems with him, I've had to start a custody battle I can't afford, M's mom moved in next door and brought all her financial problems with her. Friends have had medical crises, and family too. My dad is going through his second divorce, and almost got himself killed in a car wreck. Other friends have lost jobs, or worse, lost spouses to cancer.
With all this chaos going on around me, strangely the biggest changes have been inside myself. And I'm not entirely sure what to do about them, or if I should do anything about them at all. That key change last year of having the fog lifted from inside my head... Flipped some switches in me.
I've found parts of myself reawakened that I'd almost forgotten the existence of. Desires refueled, lusts rekindled, needs unearthed. And these things don't fit in to the life I've spent most of my efforts building. At least, I don't think they do. If they do, I have no idea how to integrate them.
So here I find myself at the beginning of another new year, 32 years old, feeling like my own skin doesn't fit. Like a stranger in my own life, not knowing anymore how I even got here and having no clue what, or where, I'm supposed to be.
One friend of mine accused me of having a mid-life crisis a decade early. Maybe he's right. Maybe I've gone through so much of life trying to do "what's right" that I never really got round to considering whether or not it was what's right for me. And I have no idea where to start in doing that, except... Something keeps coming back to me from when I was a little kid and exploring the Cali countryside. I don't even remember who said it, but the saying has been running through my head since getting drunk to the point of catharsis last Friday night.
"Before you can figure out where you want to go, you have to find out where you are"
So, I guess that's what I'm after -- finding out where, exactly, I am. So that I can figure out where I want to be, and how best to get there. Trudging through life aimlessly hasn't served me well thus far. It's time, well past time, for me to give it up.
As for what word I'd like to embody 2011 -- Direction. I'd like to be able to look back on this year and be able to say that I've finally found my internal GPS, turned it on, and at least decided where I want to go. If I haven't started heading there already.
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