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Year's end
Dec. 31st, 2003 06:01 pmI must admit that I'm not one for great deals of introspection when the New Year rolls around. I don't try to encapsulate or embrace all of the events and all of the flux of the past twelve months. I don't bother with resolutions that I already know I'll ignore. I don't even get around to putting up a new calendar until I "get around to it," which is usually sometime in mid-January.
This year, though, has been different. The change has been so great, so all-encompassing, that I feel almost compelled to look back to where I was at the end of 2002, and compare and contrast. At the same time, though, it's too great a task right now. It's too great a task to even summarize the last month, or to sort out in my head what's coming in the next few. Kristi moving to Kansas this coming Monday, my father visiting the weekend after, my birthday on the 7th, another visit (or visits, please, gods) with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rafaela whenever and however we can humanly manage it, and the thousand of adjustments that need to be made in the middle of all of this... It's all looming overhead, and it makes it difficult to reflect on what has come before.
See, I figured out that I undergo a major life upheaval of one sort or another every five years, starting when I was 12. It's like clockwork:
* At 12, I had my first yearlong emotional meltdown.
* At 17, I had my second, complete with unrealized plans of suicide.
* At 22, I got married, graduated from college, and moved away from Illinois, never to return.
* At 27, I separated from Kristi for the first time, and found myself single for the first time in a long time, at a time when I thought I'd be newly married.
And now I find myself looking at my 32nd year, unable to wrap my brain around the separation, the emotional cyclones, the tenuous work situation, the new love I've found, the changes inside that I can't even begin to describe. The best I can do is to draw a line in the sand, and say, "This side is what I lived before. This other side is what I live now. the two are like night and day. The line is 2003. That's when it changed. Right there, that's when it all changed."
This year, though, has been different. The change has been so great, so all-encompassing, that I feel almost compelled to look back to where I was at the end of 2002, and compare and contrast. At the same time, though, it's too great a task right now. It's too great a task to even summarize the last month, or to sort out in my head what's coming in the next few. Kristi moving to Kansas this coming Monday, my father visiting the weekend after, my birthday on the 7th, another visit (or visits, please, gods) with
rafaela whenever and however we can humanly manage it, and the thousand of adjustments that need to be made in the middle of all of this... It's all looming overhead, and it makes it difficult to reflect on what has come before.See, I figured out that I undergo a major life upheaval of one sort or another every five years, starting when I was 12. It's like clockwork:
* At 12, I had my first yearlong emotional meltdown.
* At 17, I had my second, complete with unrealized plans of suicide.
* At 22, I got married, graduated from college, and moved away from Illinois, never to return.
* At 27, I separated from Kristi for the first time, and found myself single for the first time in a long time, at a time when I thought I'd be newly married.
And now I find myself looking at my 32nd year, unable to wrap my brain around the separation, the emotional cyclones, the tenuous work situation, the new love I've found, the changes inside that I can't even begin to describe. The best I can do is to draw a line in the sand, and say, "This side is what I lived before. This other side is what I live now. the two are like night and day. The line is 2003. That's when it changed. Right there, that's when it all changed."
