Darwinian Wisdom and Gloria Gaynor

So it came.

It didn't end in a bang, not with a flurry of emotion or excitement. Not with the ever clichéd lip-lock at midnight or champagne toast. Nope, my 2009 came to an end in my pajama's watching cheesy movies on Lifetime. Sober as all get out while my 5 year old, try as he might, tried to stay up until the New Year, yet passed out in his Snuggie on the couch about 20 minutes too soon. So I carried him off to his Transformer's covered bed, through an obstacle course of toys still strewn hither and yon from Christmas chaos and then went back to Nora Roberts on TV.

Whoop-de-freakin-do.

I didn't ring in the new year with friends, or with family. I wasn't invited to any parties or outings. Although the day of I got those last minute texts of "Hey what are your plans later", feeling out my options to see if they happened to be better than theirs, just waiting to see if they could tag along, but not inviting me likewise. I wasn't in the mood to deal with it all anyway. Funny the way it is.

So the entire 4 day weekend I spent in my house. Pretty much. In my bed really. My son commandeered the large TV in the living room, amongst toys and holiday paraphernalia I was not in the state of mind to deal with, and I alone in my room, watched movie after movie and napped. Because clearly asleep I don't have to deal with anything or anyone.

Not that there was anyone to deal with really. The occasional call from my mother, and by occasional I of course mean every couple of hours, because she is neurotic. But other than that and a few drunken argumentative texts from the seeming one friend left on the fringe I feel I have left, it was a weekend in solitude.

I mean I could have mustered up effort to make myself available to do something. To be my once spirited and outward self, but I'm just not in it. 2009 had drained me and the last 4 days of it had hit me hard. Like it all fell upon me at once in Sleeping Beauty-esque style and I needed to slumber until the world was right again. Until the cursed way things had been passed over and I could wake again to a new and better way of life, a new and fresher being.

I'm not going to mystically sprout off things of hope or wistful optimism, that's just not my way. But perhaps there's something. Perhaps, like the end of the Grinch, my heart has a chance of maybe thawing out, of growing from being 3 sizes too small. Perhaps like all those who ring in the New Year, I too can look forward to putting it all behind me, and that maybe spending 4 days sedated was like making it all seem like a dream. A bad dream that I can awake from, well rested and ready to start again.

And so contacts may change. Friendships will come and go. They will evolve, they will end. New people will come into my life and old ones will leave. And I will learn to adapt. I have to. Survival of the fittest, right? What doesn't kill me makes me stronger, right? Isn't that what they say?

In all my Darwinian wisdom, ah screw it in all my Gloria Gaynorism, I will Survive.