auld lang syne
Time is so bizarre: you can’t make more of it, you can’t change it’s pace, and you can’t give or receive any “extra”. Mortality is a core tenant of being human, and finite time is part of the foundation of our lifespan here on Earth. New Year’s Eve is often meant to be a reflection of how we spent our time in the past year, and how we will use our time wisely in the new year. We humans cultivate these carefully laid out plans with the utmost consideration. Sometimes, we’re perched braless on the family couch with unbrushed teeth, wild hair, and dreams of the ways you’ll not waste a minute of the new year’s most precious resource which is, you guessed it: time.
(Time passed between the paragraph above and the rest of the post: 48 hours)
What’s funny in a sadistic way, is that as I was typing the above, unbeknownst to anyone in our home, our roof had thrown it’s hands in the air during the “atmospheric river” that hurled down upon San Francisco a few days ago. My wife went in our lovely laundry room to do the ole washer-to-dryer dance, and there was water all over the top of our beautiful washing machine. The next few hours were filled with containing the mess, making plans for repairs, and scheduling a miracle appointment time of 7:30am on a Sunday, which was also New Year’s Day 2023. I found it incredibly amazing that I was waking up at 6:45am on what is generally considered to be one of the chillest days of our society. But, do not look a roof-inspection-gift-horse-in-the-mouth and ask for 8am. What if they rescind their holiday morning meeting time you think you secured because of the name drop, I mean recommendation, from your amazing past-contractor who’s got the hookup on all the people you need to be in the front of the line with when an entire city is managing mass amounts of spare water. The good news is, I can report that the first sunrise of 2023 was a banger. I sat in silence waiting for the roofer with my hot coffee as I watched the sky turn purple, orange, red, and then fade in to a cobalt blue. It is not lost on me the layers of privilege involved with having a home requiring you to get a roof repair on, especially in this WILDLY pricy town.
As the coffee went to work in my body, and the roofer was doing their thing above my head, I glanced over at the high-low chart our family had made as part of our process of saying farewell to 2022. The jagged nature of the chart was enough to make anyone pause in wonder, because the highs were so high, and the lows were so low, that it looked like a catastrophic cardiac event. The good, then bad events hit in turn one, after another, after another, all throughout the year, but the first half of the year was truly something to marvel at with the lows being events of emotional dunking to the point of almost drowning. There was something very cathartic about seeing on paper, what my entire family felt in our hearts: the emotional whiplash of 2022 was very real. It’s effects were not going to be easy to clear off, like the satisfying removal of a layered smokey eye when you have but mere drops of quality makeup remover to apply. There was going to be no satisfying SWIPE, where the whole series of traumatic things would be erased from our minds and tossed in the trash can never to be seen again…
Everyone told me that having a kid would wreck your sleep. Everyone told me that having a kid would bring copious amounts and types of illnesses through your front door. Everyone told me the love you’d feel for your kid, was unlike anything you’d ever experienced before, and yet would feel so intrinsic, that you’re sure as soon as they are here, they most certainly have always been part of the fibers of your being; right?
What no one told me, is where you find the guidebook for being a steadfast, emotionally sound co-parent while managing all of the above through types of trauma that affect your whole family. These traumas had the strange twist of happening because select people around you who are not in said family, deemed them to be part of your life story. Families experience traumas all of the time, but I am used to the kind where said traumas are a result of romantic and co-parenting breakdowns, resulting in the disbanding of said former familial structures. I have almost no experience with managing the ongoing effects of being treated like a piece of dog shit on someone’s fancy shoes, because it brought joy? relief? humor? to a handful of narcissistic sociopaths.
When ak+I were a young and shiny 22 years old, we left Cincinnati. It was the only place we’d ever known as home, and it held nearly every person we knew and loved. The thing was, it wasn’t a good fit for us. It was a very hard truth, but the tristate area for two young lesbians in 2005 wasn’t helping us thrive, and often left us feeling like we could barely survive. So, we seized the day on a great job opportunity ak had received, and we loaded up our Ford Focus and ended up in a company housing complex adjacent to a corn field in a small Wisconsin town. It was the scariest thing we’d done to date. But, it held the power of being one of the times that feel like you are cracking open a book that holds the next chapters of who you are, as soon as you gathered the courage to take the first step on new-to-you ground. While we only spent three years in that town, we lived a hundred versions of life together and realized we could do it. We could move to San Francisco, and we could realize so many of our dreams together. Tomorrow marks 24 years of being a life partner with ak, and like a movie, when I think about that and flip through the files I can see us at pivotal moments of life change at ages: 16, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, 37, 40, and if I’m honest most years between those listed.
Sharing a life with someone that way we have done, has meant waking up to 24 new years, together. The past six have included our beloved child, and our family bond has fortunately only grown stronger through the traumas of the past few years. Some delight in welcoming a new year by making lists about all of the ways they will be new versions of themselves; for how they will no longer do any of the things listed on glossy magazines “Things to Leave in 2022” lists. No shade to that method, it has just yet to work for me. I’m going to try something new for me this year, and spend this crossover season in purposeful reflection. I have a lot of lessons to process, and a lot of inward reflections that deserve my focus. I have spent many years of my life in an ongoing internal argument between my social side, and my deeply introverted side. Spoiler alert for myself: both things can be true. One does not have to rule out the other, and I hear that are ways to let them reside in harmony. I think it’s high-time I let them blissfully fucking co-exist, yes? Whatever highs and lows 2022 held for you, I wish you the opportunity to reflect on them if and how you’d like to; I also wish you the grace and kindness you likely grant to others on a regular basis, but dole out sparingly for yourself. No? Just me continuously withholding self-love when I’ve made an error? Yeah, didn’t think so babe; but listen, you really do deserve to hug yourself now and again, ok. I’ll take my own advise tomorrow, I think.
Like the classic NYE song implies, let us hang on to the moments already lived and the memories already made, but let us also make space for the new. Here’s to a fortuitously joyful and healthy 2023 and beyond, for each and every one of us.