Twenty ten

If 2009 was a book, I might have shut it with a scowl on my face. Too long, I’d have thought. With really unsympathetic characters. Mostly it’s the protagonist I would have hated. She’s moody and fickle and needy yet aloof and often makes really bad decisions. She has forgotten how to love and be loved. She lets men treat her like garbage. She’s so ambitious that she’s never really grateful for anything when she has it. She’s emotionally dramatic. She’s scared of everything. She trusts no one and everyone at seemingly random intervals. She lives life in her head but she refuses to keep her inner monologue to herself. She’s got a self-destructive streak that just won’t quit. And she tries too hard to make people laugh, even at her own expense.

But, you know, sometimes I can be overly critical.

The past year hardened me, I think, which was not at all what I intended to happen. I cracked my chest open more than once only to have someone I cared for offer me steel wool to stuff back inside. I hurt and was hurt. I touched and was touched. I put myself out there and then reeled myself back in. I winced through other people’s pain and felt foolish at my own superficial worries. I was humbled. I smiled in the sunlight and soaked up colors and smells. I breathed heavily in the darkness. I had moments where I wanted to die and moments where I wanted to live forever.

I lived in 2009.

It was messy but it was all mine, every bit of it — tiny Pointillist pieces of a puzzle that really won’t be complete until long after I’m gone from this world.

Old-soul Phil once said to me, “As long as I have known you, you have never really been happy with your life.” And that is probably the truest thing he or anyone else has ever said to me. I think about that observation a lot. And at times it perks me up, because it means I’m not content to just let my life stagnate but that I want to grow and do and see and learn and never give up on making a better life. But at times it lays me low, because it means I might never be satisfied with anything, that I’ve got unreasonable expectations of who I can be and what I deserve.

I don’t know what this year will bring, and I can’t think of a good reason to speculate about it. I’ve got hopes, of course, but I hold no illusions that 2010 will be any less messy or complicated than any year — and day — that has ever existed before it.

I want to live again, to go another round swinging. But this time with strength and knowledge and — hopefully — grace that I didn’t have last year.