It’s the hardest year to leave.
I entered this year with my mother….I end it without her.
(well…on one level)
It’s nearing closing time now. I feel a little bit “Phew, glad THAT one’s over”, a lotta bit jazzed for my expectant visions on the verge of birth…..And somewhere in between, I’m holding a bit of a floor tantrum, tugging on the pant cuffs of 2015, kicking and begging for it not to make me leave.
I don’t want “old acquaintances be forgot and never brought to mind”, not ready for that auld lang syne. I want to keep all my acquaintances, all my dear loves, until my last breath, brought to my mind for all the length of time.
I didn’t know one could be so conflicted about a mere turn in a number. A fresh year has always seen me at the ready, revved to dive in and turn loose with the paint. I’m such a sucker for blank canvases.
You know that dream where you jet off somewhere and then suddenly realize you left some critical item behind? Like all of your luggage or Grandad’s hallowed heirloom entrusted to you. And now you’re all kinds of “Oh shit, what do i dooo?!” and desperate and panicky and there’s this dreadful sense of “without-ness” deep in your guts and your heart?
Yeah, kind of like that. Except I lost a whole person to the year. The dearest one to me, the one whom I thought I could never live without – not for a day, not when i’m 80 years old. The one whose name I couldn’t utter in the same sentence as “death” without choking up and shuttering, just like a big ol’ baby. Or, the baby I was.
Yup, you growed me up, Year. I have stretch marks from the growing pangs to prove it.
Here in you, Year, I lost loves and dream jobs, lifelong wishes nearly made manifest, projects near launched and pets gone and once-dependable realities and relationships I’d thought were impervious to change. And I lived. I lived on all the stronger, the more flourished, all the stauncher in my faith and my sense of all-is-well. I’m either batshit delusional, or you carried me safely through, knowing these losses were actually carving me. Knowing you’d make a Michelangelo out of me yet.
2015, I honor you. I bow to you and I am not mad. I have a sacred hurt born out of such a deep love of the things that I loved. You dug into me that teaching. That all of our pain is only a testament to how much we love Love.
But please, my dear Year, just a little while more. There is so much of me, so many parts of my heart, I leave here folded up in you, beloved and brutal sensei of a year. So much of my life engulfed by your tides before I could even fathom what was happening. Before I’d had the chance to muster up my goodbyes. Let me take just a little while longer to offer them now, before you make me go.
…And then I promise, it’s straight to the canvas with me.
The Blyss Catalyst 