The Year That Was

I cannot begin to sort through what my parting words for 2010 will be.

This year is really something. It’s not one of those years that just passed by. I truly, genuinely felt this year’s presence in every inch of my skin, in every neuron of my brain and in every hair follicle on my head.

I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with it, like a Professor who (hypothetically) slaps you right in your face how much you’ve got to learn about life and everything in between. Indeed, the year that was is a teacher with a bitter reality check in hand.

For lack of a better term (and a proper state of mind, since I’m all emotional right now), my experiences in 2010 taught me I need to grow up. There are a lot of crucial, life-changing decisions to make, relationships to develop and a future to prepare for. I can’t just continue grieving and mourning about how I missed the simpler life of being six.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, that I realized how unexperienced I am with living life.

I guess it’s safe to say that behind the carefree facade I put on public, I truly did care, and was unhappy during most of the year. No, the smiles weren’t pretense. They were genuine. But the moment I go home, reality sinks in that there really is something wrong.

Life became one big yellow lemon, and I didn’t make a lemonade out of it.

At the end of the year, it’s a personal battle. It has always been. And that’s one thing I’m thankful for this year - discovering the human in me. I may have lived with this being all my life, but I never knew how foreign I could be to myself.

Now, as I sit in our living room, with firecrackers in the background, and smoke gradually seeping into my lungs, I virtually salute the author of life. God has definitely whipped one heck of a story right there. He skillfully thickens the plot with twists and turns more mind-blowing than Inception. All that for the protagonist’s character development.

That twelve-month endeavor of personal discovery was a long, winding road. It’s not happily ever after yet, but I know I’m going there.

I don’t have big words for 2011 for I don’t want to put a time-bomb on myself to do this and not that and what have you. 

For the new year, I say let’s just start living, slowly and surely. 2011 may either be a grumpy, menopausal woman, or a walk down strawberry fields, but I’m sure the next twelve months will knock my socks off.

And that’s what I like about a new year. It never lacks the element of surprise.