Seeing the Old Year Out

Ok, ok ... promise not to do any more serious work for the rest of the year. We’re working on it as we speak. Just made a brand new slurpy. Yep, yep ... we’re drinking them straight up until we start talking silly or fall over unconscious! We got a new little ice shaving machine and just love the "pure snow!"

Been around the J-block ... this is an unusual time for me. Most often we go out in the early morning hours. I think there is a little anticipation of the night. Sure, I know other people go out and meet 3D people for drinks and a couple good songs, but then there’s us others who choose to stay in for a quieter reflective evening.

If memory serves me right I will be able to see fireworks off my balcony. That’ll be enough to make it seem more real. I could turn on the TV I suppose ... eh, we’ll see. Maybe after a while, we’ll just go out and do some walking around the J-neighborhood to see who’s in.

Strangely enough ... I don’t feel alone, especially while we’re at the computer. I feel like many of you that have found the journals to make a very big difference in my (our) life. It’s like an expression of ourselves and companionship with others that was previously missing.

Hmm, maybe there’s something else we have to do between now and our little walk. I need to say another degree of goodbye to my father and my stepmother and along with that the depression and hospitalizations that followed. I still feel saddened with their deaths, but somehow, more free.

My father passed in February and Sandy in May. In October of 2002, we’d gone to stay with him for a week. Things had gone well until the fourth day, when I stopped nodding my head as he talked. It was nothing to anything specific, we just said out loud, "we disagree." He became very angry. He said, "You know ... that’s what’s wrong with you. You want to think! I’m the father and I will do the thinking!"  But, we are 44.

It is not a matter of forgiving him. I knew this to be my father. But, after so many years between my father and ex-husband, well in truth, I’m much relieved that it is over. We are done accepting the implication that we were/are an submissive idiot. I want to speak. Maybe not yet in real person, but like this ... right now, while one word after another is typed out on my screen.

I feel safe ... This new year ... belongs to me.