My years in theater gave me good projection, a warped sense of personal space, excellent backrubbing skills and a smattering of extremely un-mathy superstitions. I get hives just thinking about talking through a mirror, and I only say the name of that Scottish play if I’m feeling really ornery. The most onerous of my totally irrational superstitions, though, is a belief that January 1 sets the tone for the rest of the year. Every year I run around like a crazy person, making sure the car’s full of gas, my drawers are full of clean clothes and my wallet’s full of money before the clock strikes twelve. I clean and organize and try to put everything right, just that one day, to try to coax the gods into granting me similar fortune in the year to follow.
So it goes without explanation of why I am alone tonight, feeling both lonely and increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that the year will mirror tonight’s bad planning. In a fit of self-pity I want to say that I’m no longer anyone’s most important one, but the situation is far more complex than just that. I could have insisted, I could have stomped my feet and demanded…and I would have someone here with me, but I didn’t because it really wasn’t the right thing to do. And I can’t even complain about how hard it is to be an adult…because, well, it just is the way it is. Sometimes, ok, maybe a lot of the time, I don’t get what I want, but I don’t think I’m all that different from anyone else. We all work hard, we all get disappointed, we all get frustrated and occasionally just want to sit down and cry that the world isn’t quite the one we were promised in the fancy color brochure.
And maybe, if I’m lucky, I’m not setting a pattern for loneliness this year. Maybe tonight instead of just sitting in a corner muttering profanities at no one in particular, I’ll be getting over myself and learning to take the bitter with the sweet…I’ll figure out how to re-imagine life on my own…I’ll find the strength in one. Because learning to enjoy life when it’s coming at me sideways…
…that would make a very good new year indeed.
