Oh 2016, you are the calendar version of a Gemini, an Oxymoron, of myself.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
2016 changed me. It changed my heart.
Living on an island doesn’t save you from heartache, but it really does make you realize what is important to you. You can’t run, you can’t hide, and you can’t drink all day every day...oh wait, that last one was a lie. I’m grateful to say that I did not hit rock bottom in 2016.
Sorry, squares. Maybe next year.
What an island will do is make you realize just how small your problems are when you look out into the huge expanse of water, thinking to yourself that you are just a tiny speck in a vast true superpower.
My car got infested with cockroaches. Who can say that for 2016?
I mean, come on.
I was with my guests from California, where I am pretty sure they don’t even have bugs. We were getting in the car after a lovely dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, and as we opened the door, the light goes on and I see about 23 (maybe more, maybe less) cockroaches scatter.
I’m not gonna pussyfoot around here, I don’t get out a lot at night. I am more of a once a week girl, and usually I am being driven as I am most certainly a big deal. (Plus, no one trusts me to drunk drive anymore after I ripped my mirror and the side of my car off). Cockroaches are night owls. So I have probably been driving around from quite sometime in the COCKROACH MOBILE. They’ve had a steady diet of Scarlett’s droppings and other shit left in the car.
I probably don’t need to describe how awful the drive home was, so I’ll be brief. Basically, I looked like a crack addict that just got turned onto meth with a mean case of poison ivy.
The next morning Elvis, my beloved exterminator and friend, came and gas chambered my Honda pilot.
You know what everyone I told about this traumatic occurrence said?
“Meh, that happens.”
Every. Single. One. It was like I said “I spilled my coffee,” that is how casual people were. Down here having a mean case of the cockroach doesn’t mean you’re dirty, it means you are in the caribbean, and you probably shouldn’t keep food in your car.
So in 2016, I named my car “The White Roach."
I also found a lot of true friendships this year. I have weeded out some of the people that are a little less than “true friends” and found some “chosen family.” I am so grateful to have the chosen family I do, from here, from home, from everywhere. A lot of people don’t have people that will travel across an ocean for them, or share their family with them, or just don’t have realness in their lives. I love my real people, and 2016 has shown all the real.
I think 2016 has been a journey of finding love and care without judgement, loving and caring without judgement, and surrounding myself with the people who know how to love me, and trying to love the people I surround myself with by being the real me. If you can’t be you, who the fuck can you be? And if you can’t handle me? Well, get out.
For 2017, I am going to gravitate toward the hard stuff. Making choices and being in the driver’s seat, surrounding myself with the realness and love, and support from people who are ready to be around someone like me. Not shaping myself to fit into a shoe that is not my own. Running from judgement, not because it scares me, but because it hurts me and hurts the person who is casting judgement.
I’m going to do it anyway when I fear the outcome won’t be palatable for others.
And I am going to sit with, know, and feed people who have no food, no friends, and no hope, because that is what my heart wants, and it has become too hard to deny that.
2016, I think you may have taught me to love myself and others better. Thank you.
