so…tonight marks not only the start of a new year but the start of a new decade, which hadn’t really hit me until oh…20 minutes ago, i guess?
i never put much stock into new years celebrations and retrospectives, so i was definitely caught off guard. and then i realized…holy shit a decade.
and what do i have to show for it, really?
2000: was neurotic mess, seriously, that’s all i remember from the time period, really. i was in high school and just starting out my first Real Relationship. the most ironic thing is january 1st, 2000, i was contemplating ending it with him because i didn’t think i was particularly attracted to him and didn’t really feel that special something when we were together. then i got all nervous about not ever being in a Real Relationship before and being fat, awkward and ugly so really this was my One Chance and i had better not Screw It Up…oh stupid, stupid folly of youth… high school was insane: every activity under the sun, basketball, 2 jobs, concurrent enrollment at the junior college in la junta, and clearly i spent the entire year mooning about with my then boyfriend just digging myself in deeper and deeper. which is ridiculous cuz if you look back at my shitty ass journals from that time i spend a good 3 or 4 months convincing myself i actually like him when what i should have been doing is running the other way. instead, i lost my virginity to that kid. shameful, really. i also went into overdrive at school to make sure that no matter how much time i spent screwing around (at this point only figuratively) with the boyfriend i had stellar grades as school was my ticket out of swink.
2001: started the year extra cheesy, finishing up my final year of high school. i was struck down with a really severe case of senioritis, and still way too involved with the boyfriend. this year was hard in so many ways, and probably the start of my downfall. i was neurotic, crazed and obsessed. pretty much with everything. i lost the most important person in my life this year to a struggle with cancer, my gram. losing her pretty much colored every day of my life in a very specific way since. everything i did from the point where she died was something i did Without Her. i went to europe this year — england and france — Without Her. i was accepted to every college i applied to — Without Her. i made my choice (probably with less deliberation than i should have…) and moved 2,000 miles across the country to start my life at a prestigious elitist institution Without Her…when i think about it, the wound is still raw where she was ripped out of my life and i still ache a bit. and then ache a bit more when i realize how the pain has dulled over the years. oh, and of course i wasn’t smart enough to end it with the boyfriend, which would play out interestingly my freshman year of college…
2002: i finished my first year at The University, by the skin of my fucking teeth. juggling work/life/school/work/work hasn’t been an issue for me my entire life, but it’s harder out here because i don’t know anyone, i don’t have any ties to anyone (is it just me or does everyone in new england know everyone and have friends all up and down the east coast? wtf?) and i’m 100% on my own. i miss my brother, but other than that i do not miss anything of my life back in colorado. what? not even the boyfriend, you say? well, no, how could i miss the fucker when he followed me out to boston over the winter of 2001 and has firmly entrenched himself into my life so it’s yet another thing i have to juggle, causing no end of strife between me and freshman year roommates. this is the year i became fast friends with my (at the time) Absolute Best College Friend, and we were inseparable inasmuch as the boyfriend would “allow”. i spent the summer working at University and scrimping and saving money to get by. i worked very hard, but also am aware that i was hardly working.
2003: probably one of the worst, most miserable years in existence. left school under poor circumstances in february, and at the same time got tricked into pseudo-moving in with The Ex™ in motherfucking watertown. that lasted nine months and probably was the catalyst for the Worst/Longest Breakup in History™…EVER! no, seriously, it was a motherfucking p r o c e s s and involved cigarettes, whiskey, drunk dialing (mostly on his part, oddly enough), no sleeping ever, changing phone numbers, misery misery misery. seriously, it was poor. the entire year was pretty much consumed with dealing with our falling apart and falling out. it was also when i realized i could totally have sex with Other People and not have to agonize over it or deal with all of The Ex’s bullshit. freedom! incidentally, this is also the year that i started (part time) at my current job…seriously, i’ve been working at [redacted] since 2003. i don’t know if i should be proud or ashamed…don’t answer that! oh, and this is also when i discovered CL and became even more of a misfit freakazoid geek than i already was. the best part of this year was that i got my first (of what i hope will be many!) tattoo. it was gorgeous, it is gorgeous, i have never made a better decision.
2004: i worked my ass off all year and also re-broke up (or continued breaking up) with The Ex. i became bitter and cynical and despite still obsessing over my weight was considerably lighter in the ass department due to a steady diet of whiskey and cigarettes — also i was habitually, religiously at the gym every morning at 6 am for spin class and sometimes again in the evening. true story. i moved out of watertown and into allston, i immersed myself in Life in Boston and developed some pretty bad habits and questionable relationships. i expanded my horizons sexually, which is not as racy as it sounds but it just means i got the horrible taint of The Ex off of me. and how glad am i that we never succumbed to ex-sex? so.fucking.glad. i developed numerous crushes, and sometimes i acted on them. i also had one Very Bad Encounter in which i behaved extra bitchily, but seriously, the dude deserved it. also: ew. i was still very close with College Best Friend. i manged to arrange my re-admission into University, which was like, a fucking accomplishment, and i set course to start for fall of 2004. i thought i was putting my life back together. i was absolutely insane. seriously. i also made some other really good friends, including my only real friend from school.
2005: i worked so.fucking.hard. in school, and not nearly hard enough. i had three jobs, i never slept, i was juggling college life with boston life and just not doing very well at it. i was constantly broke. like, constantly, and all that work did not come anywhere close to paying for school. i was a failure. fail fail failure. i failed. this is what i keep obsessing over all year: failure. it colored my life, and i still feel very sore and prickly over it. tender and broken. i failed. i.have.failed. ugh. i left school at the end of the semester, i would not be going back. also, my ibook died a horrible death at school, i blame them entirely. fucking University!!! of course, sensing my pain and suffering, The Ex nosed his way back into my life at inconvenient moments and i eventually changed my cellphone number and hinted around that i had died, to avoid him. i pursued my biggest crush, and moved back to allston with a friend and best of all? absolute best of all? i got a kitten! that’s right, got my lola bear february 2005 and it has been magical ever since. even if she is a fatty mcfatpants. i was pseudo-unemployed (read: had only one job) for about a month, i took a temp job or two, but kept my current job as a part time gig and life wasn’t too horrible, i suppose. oh, except for the part where one of the “day jobs” i had resulted in being sexually harassed by a total assclown in copley square. that’s right, fuck you, assclown! i began really taking advantage of all the music scene in boston had to offer and saw more concerts than you can shake a retarded baby at.
2006: march 29, 2006, a day that will live in infamy…i found out my daddy was sick. like really sick, really bad sick. i did not handle it well. this pretty much was my obsession. i worked, i worried, i played, i worried, i did anything and i worried. i felt helpless, which is really just the worst. i got a job with The Government and it was the source of my ire and amusement for a while. i started entrenching myself at my part time gig and by august of 2006, it was official: i was full time. a Real Employee™. hah! the craziness has never stopped since then. i continued to see the boy more and more, which was excellent. that summer, my BFF and i drove my car cross-country with norah. i think by this point The Ex was permanently out of my life, which i consider a major bonus. incidentally, i believe this was the year i had a falling out with my Best College Friend — which was actually great because when you think about it, she wasn’t a very good friend at all. so, good riddance!
2007: my daddy was sick. my daddy was sick and that was my entire year. i had entrenched myself full-time at my current job and for the first time ever — seriously, First Time, since i started working legally at 16 — i only had one job. it was kind of insane. i moved into my First Real Apartment in february, All By Myself, even! it was deluxe. i was making ok-ish money and only had one job to go to. this was actually a godsend because the latter half of the year i spent shuttling myself back and forth from colorado. the boy was still around (yay!) and generally awesome (double yay!) and we also discovered the joys of maine. towards the end of summer i totaled the toyota and was heartbroken over the loss of something that belonged to my gram more than anything. that fall i got a new car, my gorgeous monte carlo, and i’ve fallen in love with it. the boy moves in “officially” in september, but had pretty much lived with me anyway. it’s weird and scary, this cohabitating thing, but on the whole it is good. i pretty much lived in colorado and worked remotely from october-december of this year. it was a dark, bleak, painful winter. the only good thing that came out of that winter was getting nacho. so, well on my way to being crazy cat lady? and then…i lost my father…
2008: i don’t have a daddy. some other stuff happened this year but really it was ALL about this. i spent a lot more time in maine with the boy, i spent a lot of time with my friends in boston, but generally i was sad a lot. i am sad a lot. it does not get better. 2008 was kind of a non-year for me, i know stuff happened, but i don’t think i really paid enough attention. 2008 happened through a haze of Not Having a Father, really. in the spring, one of my besties from high school got married, and the boy and i went to colorado. this made our 3rd trip to my hometown together, which i guess is a big deal. i am now old enough to have friends who marry (ignoring the fact that most kids back home get knocked up in HS and a number of my graduating class has like 7- to 9-year-olds at this point)… in the fall/early winter, one of my nearest and dearest loses her father, too. it is not something one enjoys having in common with friends…life sucks for both of us, and i don’t always know the best thing to do or say because i am not dealing with it well, either. work gets a bit difficult at the end of the year, which will set the tone for 2009, that’s for sure. i narrowly escape getting fired in december, i will continue to worry about this throughout the coming year.
2009: happened, read about it if you want to. it was a shitty year, i think. it felt like summer never happened, really. my body keeps letting me down in exceptionally shitty ways and my life kinda feels like it’s spiraling out of control one day and completely stagnant and unchanging the next. i saw a lot of concerts, i spent time in maine and rhode island, i left the country again (finally!), i got old and busted. if i had have realized it was the Last Year of the Decade, i might have done something differently? or whatever…
so that’s it, my decade in review…god, what a hot mess these last 10 years have been. and holy shit it has been ten years already! god. it kinda makes me ill to think that 10 years ago to this day i was just an idyllic seventeen-year-old who had no idea what life was really about (i still don’t), or what was in store…
i probably would’ve done a lot of shit differently…wouldn’t i?
a whole decade and…what do i have to show for it, indeed.
You forgot to mention that somewhere in there you acquired the most awesome midget in the world. Though, I would be really hard-pressed to say what year that was. Just sayin’.