a bliss of another kind
so this is farewell to the year: a year of finding validation in places I’d never looked; for solidifying best friendships, for proving myself to my work family, and for reemerging as an adult I would enjoy being around. moreover, it became a year of matching the players in my life to the man I am now.
a whole person, not a person left over.
and i see now, from the edge of the year, that the men I’ve obsessed over are vastly different as whole people than the men they portrayed in relationships with me.
here we are at the holidays. the parties, the planning. it takes over and speeds by. i look forward to days when school no longer stops me from adventure and I can meet new characters again. brandon will take me to the art museum. alex will take me to a film. brian and I will venture to manhattan.
soon I will see family again, something that can often be bittersweet and haunting. on Thanksgiving, i threw myself into the kitchen, making a homemade glaze for the ham, carving the turkey, cooking the stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, everything I could get my hands on. in part because I don’t know how to put together any of those things alone, but also because I could be of help while avoiding the state of family affairs: my aunt, who hates her new job, is trying to raise three kids on a fraction of her old salary; the feeling I had driving up to my parents’ house and seeing the “for sale” sign for the first time; watching my uncle, who can’t afford his million dollar estate, evicting my grandmother from her home by selling her belongings and forcing her to live out of boxes. it all hit me, walking through the house in which she raised me, opening the door to the room I lived in during high school, and being greeted by an echo of emptiness, floors stripped of furniture and carpeting, bare walls soulless for the first time since the seventies.
my sister will turn 20 in five days. i vividly remember the day she was born. waking up in the middle of the night to my parents leaving. having popcorn and a weird concoction of soda in the hospital. holding Katy for the first time.
i am ready to bring things to a close. tomorrow I have a very important review and we bid farewell to my CEO, a man I admire and will miss. this past weekend was a necessary release with my boys, dancing around alex’s house, shirt open, cracking jokes with p.t. and brian, all to forget an unexpected violation the night before by a stranger who took too many liberties - one final blow to my year.
these are the people who need me. the ones who can cry to me on the phone, who let me talk them through relationships as they chain smoke. this particular one, heartbroken by a girl who has yet to prove she deserves him, tapped the couch indicating I should sit. i collapse down from the weight of the evening and he throws his arms around me. i weave mine through his, pulling him in as I would a younger brother. i rub his hair and shoulders, and he falls asleep in my arms. i turn the light off to his bedroom knowing we’ve both been in this place and we will continue to have each other.
this year has taught me a lot about love.