Frodo Baggins once said "How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep... that have taken hold."
I spent most of 2011 waiting for it to get better. "It" being that thing I had called my life. I was waiting to feel like I was finally waking up from what seemed like a really long sleep. One of those sleeps where it starts out easy, turns itself into the best of dreams, and then slowly, gradually, becomes a nightmare. A nightmare that doesn't ever want to end. You open your eyes and the world around you has changed yet you have not, therein lying the irony that finally gets to you. You, the proponent of things changing and the good that can come from it.
When my relationship with the dreaded-ex ended in the spring of 2011, to say the world stopped spinning would be a bit of an understatement. I've written about this before so I'll spare the usual details, but it is a blanket statement that I need to get out there. In the past I had been able to move on fairly quickly from boyfriends, this time "attempting," however in vain it was, to do the same. Seven months after my relationship ended, I thought I was ready to move on and took my chance at another relationship. Of course I failed miserably and was left back at ground zero.
In hindsight I can see now that it was because I wasn't ready, but not for the reasons you might think. More on that later.
As the bells chimed on New Years Eve and I was launched into 2012 with hardly any clue as to where my life was going, a sort of depression began to take a much more firm grasp over me. I wrote a blog that day announcing that I would take a cue from @caitcd and try to accomplish 26 new things I had never done before over the course of the year, blogging about them as I did so. Is it bad to say that I didn't buy it? Or didn't buy "into" it, as it were. What I wanted was to do something that would push me beyond myself, far from where I had been toward something so much greater. Whether I would get there or not would remain to be seen.
But then I spent a few weeks in a sort of... stasis. I don't know what else to call it. I worked my dead-end job at Express that had taken so long to go ANYWHERE that by the time it did I had lost my interest completely. I drove a car that was falling apart quicker and quicker as the days went on. No love life, a friendship with my best @markstyleme on the fritz due to a silly argument, and no ambition to change a thing. It was almost February when I decided to take a day trip to Madison to visit @shizzauna, a good friend who was also in the dumps at that time.
Misery loves company!
We went to lunch at The Great Dane and I had thought to bring along my camera, a gift I bought myself after the breakup. When she went to the bathroom I took the camera out and turned on the video function, aiming it at the red jar with a candle burning inside on the table before me. The wheels, my dear friends, started turning in that moment. Maybe the year didn't have to be just me blogging about 26 stupid things I would do (like buy an iPad (I mean, really, who gives a shit if you buy an iPad (yes that really was on the original list of 26 things.))) When she came back to the table I cemented my idea in stone.
"What are you doing?" she asked, taking a seat and watching me power down the camera and tuck it back into my pocket. I inhaled and let the words out.
"I'm recording a year of my life."
Now in all fairness I know how dramatic that sounds but it is how it really happened; a sudden split decision and then I hit the ground running. I filmed a fair amount that day, then got home that night and filmed a fake opening to the eventual video I would compile. Every month has a title card video and for January and February it is faked (my hair should have been dark brown but I had put blond in it at that point, so for January it is covered with a hoodie and February it is wet (me so tricky.)) Then the rest fell into place.
The word spread through my inner-circle pretty quickly about what I was doing. The fact that video was tagging along with the 26 Golden Things seemed to up the ante a bit. Those closest to me grew comfortable with my filming them and then it became a sort of game. A story that they could tell... a story that I could tell. I'll be honest when I say that I used it during my interview with Pottery Barn. When they asked me something I was proud of, I gushed about my project for the year and watched their eyes light up at the idea of someone who would go out and do that. Trust me, it looks even better on paper than you'd think.
I won't ramble much about the project because I've done that enough and "technically" it is complete. What I will say is that it was something that came together after a lot of endurance, tears, laughter, and in the end, fun. A lot of times I had to be my own cheerleader to keep it up, but for the most part I had some pretty great company as well (c:
A few paragraphs back I mentioned how I wasn't ready to find a new love after my last failed attempt just a few days shy of a year ago. Once upon a time I had an AOL profile with this quote in it: "I choose to impress myself before I go impressing anybody else." I used to smirk and think I was so clever having that on there but I never really understood the implications of what it meant. To me at 18 years old it was sassy. To me at 26 it was a wake-up call.
I wasn't ready to find a new love because I had some work to do on myself first. There are two options at the end of every relationship, for both parties involved. We each took a separate road; he chose to find a another lover and I chose to find myself.
I no longer have to ask myself who learned more.
I suppose in many ways I have a lot to thank him for, really. The definition of a catalyst is "a substance that causes or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being affected," and for me that is what he was. He took me from where I was at 22 and dropped me at the door of who I was going to become a few years later. I know what eventually happened to him and I felt smug when I found out, because I knew I had chosen the correct path. Maybe in his eyes, he did too, and that's alright. To each their own. I could be so angry over what happened but if the ends justifies the means then I have no more complaints.
Sarah Ockler wrote "--then I realized that I was holding on to something that didn't exist anymore. That the person I missed didn't exist anymore. People change. The things we like and dislike change. And we can wish they couldn't all day long, but that never works." Words have never rung so true, and with that, I have an announcement: the dreaded-ex shall never be referred to again in any form or context, in any blog of mine after today, ever again. The space in my mind he still occupies is only for me now... I suppose that revelation has been a long time coming and maybe should have a while ago. But we are constantly learning and to learn it eventually is better than never at all.
I think I portray myself as a person that really has his shit together, and I don't. I put on a good show but I don't actually know what I'm doing. Sometimes I feel like everyone around me is getting a handle on things and then going off to live a great life that I can't seem to attain. And there I am, y'know, over there on the sidelines waving my arms and shouting "I'll see you guys later!" while waiting for an opportunity to fall in my lap. Because when the people around you get their own business in order, be it marriage, kids, moving away, moving in, moving out, new relationships, new friends, whatever... it doesn't ever seem to include you. At times I wonder if my whole life is going to go trolling by in this manner; me waiting for things to happen... waiting for someone else to come and make it happen for me.
Everyone else has always had to figure things out for me while I just stood there. Reacting.
And then there are times when I feel like the lessons I've learned this year have been so great and so monumental that maybe those other people who "seem" to have it together really don't. That they aren't ever going to really know the satisfaction of doing something totally and wholly for yourself and how rewarding of an experience it is. I let go of my inhibitions this year and took a stance for myself, something I had not had the nerve to do before. I made it all about me, and while my ego may have flared up here or there, it was a great experience because it showed me how happy I could be again if left to my own devices.
If I could, I would call up myself at age 18 in a heartbeat. "You choose to impress yourself before impressing everybody else?" I'd say, popping a piece of gum in my mouth and flashing a toothy grin in the mirror. "Well, at 27 I'd like to say mission accomplished, Mr. Parker."
Putting myself "out there" the way I do (and on a fairly consistent basis, might I add) has paid off in a very strange way. I used to keep a blog on MySpace that few people read, and while I have amassed a small army of true friends over Facebook in the interim since then, I don't think any of them (any of you) got to see who I really was until the break-up. In April that year I penned my"open-letter," calling the dreaded-ex out on everything we endured together. It was remarkable how the messages just poured in. Most were of support, a few slaps on the back for having the balls to put it all out there, several apologies over what had occurred and the "I would have told you if I'd known" testimonials. There was also anger from a few individuals who felt I aired too much dirty laundry (both of our dirty laundry, not just his.) Those messages got me to see that maybe I should start writing about my life again.
This blog has become a tool for me to express myself, often in ways that I cannot do even with my own voice.
I suppose that the underlying feeling of 2012 was a theme that has run rampant in several parts of my life; the ever lasting question of 'what if?' The movie Dragonheart told me when I was 10 that "dreams die hard and you hold them in your hand long after they've turned to dust," and that is one of the things I feel that keeps people FROM dreaming. Failure. What happens if it doesn't turn out the way you thought it would? What happens if it DOES turn out the way you thought it would? Well, I guess that's the great part about daring to dream. You get to start a whole new one either way.
I feel like I am finally at peace. I feel like... I don't really know, actually; like I did something that MEANT something. I achieved something profound, even if I am the only one that sees it that way. After all, I did it for myself and nobody else, right? Take the reins in your own hands and redirect the horses dragging you forward in life. Like Megan said in Bridesmaids, "you are your own problem. You are also your own solution." Now that I've done what I wanted to do, I feel like I can do anything else I want.
The natural progression being that I will attain the ability to fly by the time I reach 30. Obviously.
2012, the Golden Year, being 26... whatever you want to call it; it changed me. Sheer will changed me. I have always idolized Vanilla Sky for cueing me in on the wonderful mentality that "every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around." It's true. I gave myself 12 months and 26 steps to turn it all around, to figure myself out, and to feel like I am ready to take not just a small step forward, but to run and jump and scream and shout in leaps and bounds. I'm ready to get swept off my feet, I'm ready to fall in love, I'm ready to move out on my own and take the world by the horns, screaming my accomplishments in its face the entire time. Feeling that is indescribable.
Labeling 2013 as anything other than the first page of a new book would feel wrong, because that's what it is going to be by all intents and purposes. I'm choosing to look at the Golden Year as the culmination of events that lead toward something truly remarkable in my life, and if that meant it was me attaining my dream then it is certainly time to find a new one. There is a whole myriad of things I'd like to accomplish this coming year but I suppose I'll save those for New Years Day and the reveal of said resolutions. Gotta keep you coming back, right? Right!
So all that being said and you now seeing that being 26 was the turning point in my life (and how ANY age can be the turning point in yours should you desire it to be,) I'll leave you with the best quote I read all year. It was shared by my best @klreynol's sister Kelly, and I wanted to share it with you all. I'll see you in the New Year... and what a glorious one it will be (c:
I love you all so much. I do, and I hope you believe it when you read it. Thank you, each and every single one of you from the absolute bottom of my heart for taking this journey with me.
"As you grow up, you will learn that even the one person that wasn't supposed to ever let you down probably will. You will have your heart broken more than once and it gets harder every time; you'll break hearts, too, so remember how it felt when yours was shattered. You'll fight with your best friend. You'll blame a new love for the things an old one did. You'll cry because time is passing by too fast and you'll eventually lose someone you love more than anything else. So take too many pictures, laugh too much, and love like you've never been hurt because every 60 seconds you spend upset is another minute of happiness you'll never get back. Don't be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin."
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