2009 is dead. Hello 2010. You better be good to me.
"How are you, Cate?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I replied. And this time I actually meant it. Not a tinge of emotion hiding in the background. It came out plain and natural.
"It's four in the afternoon and I just woke up. Studio 23 was playing Grey's Anatomy reruns all night and I couldn't stop," I continued.
"I never liked Grey's," he said, and we continued to talk about other things.
2009 was an amazingly ironic year. It birthed certain hopes along with its beginning. And exactly by December, these very hopes were completely crushed. On my birthday, nonetheless. They turned to ash on the spot. They were never meant to live more than a year.
For some reason I find it easy to let go of the things I lose. It's not that I don't cry or feel pain. I do. But when it becomes crystal clear that I've come to the end of the road, I take a deep breath, let it sink in, bite my lip, meekly nod my head in acceptance as tears well up in my eyes, and gently close the door for good. It takes me around two days to get back to happiness. I consider it of the utmost importance and urgency to fill my life only with what is living. As soon as something dies I bury it, briefly mourn my heart out, then I get up and leave it behind to rot away. I may be stupid and vulnerable enough to be tortured by certain things, but I refuse to take further pains from what is already dead. And that is why it is unusually easy for me to move on.
So it isn't the things I lose that haunt me. What haunts me is the losing itself and the open space that is left inside me. Dino once told me that we human beings have the tendency to put our past into our future. Like if we lose in a certain endeavor, we expect that we will keep on losing if we ever embark on similar endeavors again. And perhaps that is why I couldn't find it in myself to start 2010 with enough good vibes. I felt jaded. What if 2010 was just another 2009 in the making? What if I'm just gonna keep on losing? What if this is the story of my life?
I buzzed Danielle on ym around 11:00pm last December 31, 2009, as the firecrackers were getting louder.
"You're spending New Year's Eve inside your house?" she asked me.
"Yeah. I've lived to see 21 New Year's Eves already. There is nothing new to see, just the usual firecrackers and fireworks. I don't think I'm missing out," was my jaded reply. (Now that I type it out, I realize saying such things made me sound really OLD)
Eventually the internet (Facebook, mainly) got boring because no one was attending to their computers anymore. People stopped replying to me on ym, including my friend. They were all obviously outdoors already, taking in the celebration and the smoke. With nothing better to do, I stepped out of our gate to join my family. Just then the noise started to get louder as our neighbors set off their huge, potentially injuring firecrackers. The skies lit up with sparkles and orbs of color and light. And at that very moment I felt a very strong impression that 2010 was going to be awesome; that it was going to be different in a good, good way. My eyes welled up with hope.
Now it's very possible that I was just being sentimental, putting meaning into the sights and sounds of that night. Heck, even New Years are just socially constructed boundaries in time, given meanings that weren't originally there. But I shall stop being an overly rational ass right here.
I will give 2010 a chance as I open up to all the new possibilities. And I believe there will be such possibilities. As my friend Dino said, we ought to take our past out of our future and put it back into the past, where it really belongs. The past does not predict the future. The past just happened and that's it. The future ought to be a blank space where anything can happen. Only the present --our actions and attitudes-- can affect the future. So if I want an awesome 2010, I gotta start being and feeling awesome now.
2009 is dead and I have mourned it long enough. Hello 2010. You better be good to me.
Catherine
ps. Image snagged from Sheila
"I'm fine," I replied. And this time I actually meant it. Not a tinge of emotion hiding in the background. It came out plain and natural.
"It's four in the afternoon and I just woke up. Studio 23 was playing Grey's Anatomy reruns all night and I couldn't stop," I continued.
"I never liked Grey's," he said, and we continued to talk about other things.
2009 was an amazingly ironic year. It birthed certain hopes along with its beginning. And exactly by December, these very hopes were completely crushed. On my birthday, nonetheless. They turned to ash on the spot. They were never meant to live more than a year.
For some reason I find it easy to let go of the things I lose. It's not that I don't cry or feel pain. I do. But when it becomes crystal clear that I've come to the end of the road, I take a deep breath, let it sink in, bite my lip, meekly nod my head in acceptance as tears well up in my eyes, and gently close the door for good. It takes me around two days to get back to happiness. I consider it of the utmost importance and urgency to fill my life only with what is living. As soon as something dies I bury it, briefly mourn my heart out, then I get up and leave it behind to rot away. I may be stupid and vulnerable enough to be tortured by certain things, but I refuse to take further pains from what is already dead. And that is why it is unusually easy for me to move on.
So it isn't the things I lose that haunt me. What haunts me is the losing itself and the open space that is left inside me. Dino once told me that we human beings have the tendency to put our past into our future. Like if we lose in a certain endeavor, we expect that we will keep on losing if we ever embark on similar endeavors again. And perhaps that is why I couldn't find it in myself to start 2010 with enough good vibes. I felt jaded. What if 2010 was just another 2009 in the making? What if I'm just gonna keep on losing? What if this is the story of my life?
I buzzed Danielle on ym around 11:00pm last December 31, 2009, as the firecrackers were getting louder.
"You're spending New Year's Eve inside your house?" she asked me.
"Yeah. I've lived to see 21 New Year's Eves already. There is nothing new to see, just the usual firecrackers and fireworks. I don't think I'm missing out," was my jaded reply. (Now that I type it out, I realize saying such things made me sound really OLD)
Eventually the internet (Facebook, mainly) got boring because no one was attending to their computers anymore. People stopped replying to me on ym, including my friend. They were all obviously outdoors already, taking in the celebration and the smoke. With nothing better to do, I stepped out of our gate to join my family. Just then the noise started to get louder as our neighbors set off their huge, potentially injuring firecrackers. The skies lit up with sparkles and orbs of color and light. And at that very moment I felt a very strong impression that 2010 was going to be awesome; that it was going to be different in a good, good way. My eyes welled up with hope.
Now it's very possible that I was just being sentimental, putting meaning into the sights and sounds of that night. Heck, even New Years are just socially constructed boundaries in time, given meanings that weren't originally there. But I shall stop being an overly rational ass right here.
I will give 2010 a chance as I open up to all the new possibilities. And I believe there will be such possibilities. As my friend Dino said, we ought to take our past out of our future and put it back into the past, where it really belongs. The past does not predict the future. The past just happened and that's it. The future ought to be a blank space where anything can happen. Only the present --our actions and attitudes-- can affect the future. So if I want an awesome 2010, I gotta start being and feeling awesome now.
2009 is dead and I have mourned it long enough. Hello 2010. You better be good to me.
Catherine
ps. Image snagged from Sheila