Farewell 2010

Everyone is looking back at the year, or at the decade past. Some are looking forward to the new year, with determination and new found grasp on life. I am unable to look forward, not even to forecast the color of the sky in a month's time. Maybe that's why I enjoy reading the horoscope sometimes, especially at the beginning of a new year. This way I can get excited about possible prospect of having success or luck in love. Or at least, I can read and chuckle about it knowing full well it is all shit. Listen, I'd say to anyone who will listen. This might be my (or your) year. Aren't you an ox? It says 2 months out of the year will be great! The ten months you just have to lie low or pray to God that it won't suck so much. And you (or whoever foolish enough to listen to my ramblings) will laugh and politely inform me that you (or they) don't believe in horoscope. Doesn't matter to me though, because I would have continued to read the whole damned prediction to you from the website anyway. I like hearing something great will happen to me, no matter how false sounding it is. Why do you think I tape fortune cookies (the ones that make sense) to the monitor at work. "Great change is upon you," it says. And I would tell my best friend, "See, I'll win lotto and can finally quit this job,"

2011 is the year of metal rabbit, says the Chinese horoscope; tread cautiously and with strength in your heart. It says I am a horse, and I am thinking horses and rabbits don't mix so well. But I get tired of being apprehensive all the time. I want to run naked in the rain (like I used to when I was a kid) and say the hell with the world. I am afraid that my neurosis will kick in before I can entertain this thought to the fullest. Sometimes I think maybe I won't make it past this week, but sometimes I think I will live to be a thousand and ninety. I am a mystery to myself, but I think everyone else in the world (who gives a damn) can see right through me, all the way inside to my heart and its pumping muscles; to my brain and the lights of my neurons, and inside my marrow where the mishmash of my blood cells are being born each day. I look into the mirror and I can't see past the reflected stranger standing before me.

You see me though. Even if no one else do. You see my hurt behind my harsh words, you see my insecurity behind my tough exterior that I put up. You see me and you still want me. And that says everything to me. 2010. My tumultuous year filled with wonder and love, downs and ups, and all through the tears and craziness, I feel blessed, chosen, embraced by the goodness this world has to offer. (Don't say it out loud, don't jinx it! my neurosis nudges me as I write this) But I have to thank my fate and to all who have stood by and cheered me on. Just a handful of days left in this year and I hope I can ride out this luck a little further.

One day at a time. One word at a moment. Jittery inside and fluttering outside, I am hanging on to this ride.


* originally posted as (Expectations.. yours and mine..) same time last year, I think. ;)