i send my SOS to the world- this is my message in a bottle. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Pursuit of Happyness And now it's the beginning of a new year. I write one of these every year- a retrospective on the year and anticipation of the next. But this year it feels different somehow. I wrote last year that I was not a different woman in 2006 then I was in 2005; just a more challenged, growing, learning one. But could I have ever seen how this year was going to turn out? When I wrote my last New Years retrospective, could I have known where my life would take me, or even ultimately, where it didn't take me? Could I have known what challenges I faced this year, what obstacles I'm facing, how the tiniest, smallest triumphs have meant so much more because of my defeats? 2006 was a building year- a year in which the woman I was tried so hard to breathe in the face of woman I needed to be. I graduated from college. I started working, my first post-college job. I actually had weekends and holidays off. I stopped spending every weekend in the Gaslamp. I was a bridesmaid twice in 2 weeks, and realized that most of my high school friends are on their way to getting married. I signed new production, management and songrwriting deals. I got a musical offer from a big time company. But I guess 2006 was more than that. If I had to be honest, 2006 was far more defined by challenges than by achivements. There was a spot of time where I spent more time in pajamas then in out of them. Times when I cried so much that I wondered if it was possible to release anything less than air. Moments when, surrounded by all of my friends, I wanted to scream out of sheer desperation because I wondered if anyone could ever understand how I really felt. There were times when I felt guilty for feeling happy. There were times when I stood in the kitchen, out of eye line, biting the insides of my cheeks to keep everything- the anger, the hopelessness, the fear, the sheer sadness of everything bottled inside. I stopped feeling connected to the world-- me, me who wants nothing else out of her life but to feel a sense of home in the world; to be engrossed, entranced and engaged by all of life's possibilities. I went to the movies once by myself, on a Saturday night. I was there for 6 hours because I couldn't bear to speak to anyone. It seemed at the time that living vicariously through someone else's life was the only way to get through my own. I remembered feeling as the lights came up at the end of the second show, a sense of profound disappointment because ever so briefly was I able to forget who I was and how things were. But I also redisovered friends, people who were, surprisingly enough, the people who pulled me through. I kicked and screamed and pushed away as many people as I possibly could, but whether or not they knew the why, there were two who went above and beyond anything I could have ever asked for mainly because they gave me what I needed- even if I didn't ask. They saved me from myself. And if I could characterize this year, all I can say is that I will forever be touched by the fact that there were a couple who reached down, into the deepest, darkest place that I couldn't even get myself out of, and try so hard to keep me from drowning when all I wanted to do was go under. I gave up so much of who I was in 2006. Not out of choice, but out of necessity. I wouldn't take back a minute of it because I know that each and every single one of those choices all add up to the fact that I can be here, spending this time with my grandmother. Even if she doesn't remember that I spend every day with her. Even if I have a front row seat in the show of her decline. Even if I know that by loving her, every single day I'm only investing in something I'm going to lose, well, I'm doing it. In a heartbeat. I had family drama. I had rounds of tests and I had to face the possibility that I might never have children. I didn't go to grad school, I didn't move to San Francisco. So yes, this year was hard. There were plenty of good things, but if I had to be honest with myself, this is how I will remember 2006. And I can only imagine that at certain points 2007 will contain some of the same. I recognize this. But, I know that it won't be like this forever. Even now, I'm trying to find balance in my life. So maybe it may get worse. But what keeps me going is that I know for a fact that eventually, it will get better. And that means everything. 11:27 p.m. - Monday, Jan. 01, 2007 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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