saint joseph’s baby aspirin

Soon, it will be time to say farewell to 2011.

I can’t say I’ll miss it.

I thought 2010 was horrible, but a year out, I see it differently. For eight months of 2010, I was the happiest I had ever been, in love for the first time, really, enjoying the company of someone I thought had hung the moon and the stars and everything else around. Then, for those last months, I was devasated.

But in reality, 2011 was harder than 2010 because I have spent the vast majority of it dealing with the fallout of my broken heart, because facts are facts: you can’t just turn loving someone off. And my love lingered, swelled, ebbed and flowed, and the thought that he might someday reach out to contact me allowed that love to cause my chest to ache every day for weeks and months.

And on and on it went for months and months.

It was a loss I was completely unprepared for and have spent a full year rebounding from. I don’t know that I completely have, or will, or what. Maybe this is how you are supposed to feel about that first love. I don’t know. I do know that I wish I could fervently hate him — he deserves it — but I don’t. I do know that I regret the near-year I spent with him. I regret that I loved someone who didn’t deserve it. I regret that I loved someone who saw me as nothing more than a brief interlude in his life. I regret that I shared so many intimate thoughts and positions (heh) with him. I regret that he still crosses my mind, and that I am little enough to hope I cross his, too and he is filled with remorse or regret or something (although I’m sure he doesn’t). I regret that I continued over the last year to not always write exactly what I wanted because I knew people in his life read my blog (You will never be more stealthy than a reporter, I promise). I regret that just the other day, my six year old asked if he would ever see him again. (Actually, I raged at that, and sent a big mental forget you to him over hurting my child.) I regret that I never realized that he sorta looks like young Mr. Burns until months later, because I would really have enjoyed sharing that bit of information with him.

Seriously.

I regret that I have lost this year to that year.

It’s been a year of loss, though, aside from just The Man Who Used My Heart as a Pinata.

We have had losses at work. Many losses, and those stories aren’t mine to tell, but they have affected me just the same.

I’ve lost the relationships with people I loved. One, a friend, who decided to simply fade away. Another, a sister who told me she’d never liked me, never considered me her friend, and simply tolerated me because blood bound us together.

It has been hard to feel rejection from all aspects of life.

On Christmas Eve my most beloved companion, Lucky the whippet, passed away in his sleep. It has been the most difficult thing to deal with, the loss of Lucky Dog. He was my buddy, and the constant in the past year. He was the one being who was always happy to see me. And now, he’s gone.

Now, the little white house I’ve called home for two years has more than one ghost in it. The silence is unnerving. The silence is everywhere. The silence is what’s left.

It seemed as if Lucky’s death was coming on the edge of the clouds finally clearing, and has thrown me back in some strange way.

What do I want from 2012? I don’t know, exactly.

I want there to be more good days, weeks and months. I want the Noodle to keep growing and laughing.

I want to be able to toss those last few things I have, those last few relics, away. There’s a ring in my nightstand that he handed to me one day. Maybe I don’t need to remember anymore.

Maybe, if 2010 was the year of love and 2011 was the year of heartache, then 2012 can be the year of moving on.

So here’s to you, 2012. At least I sometimes see my sense of humor peek out.

“You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all it sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”

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