Dear 2011...

Dear 2011,

With you only an hour away from ending, I have a few choice words for you.

See you the fuck later.

2011 was a year that brought a lot of changes to my life, and not all for the better. There were losses a plenty, and sure a few gains, (very few)  but overall I am glad to see this year off and hopefully bring in 2012 with nothing but the promise of a better year.

I lost something irreplaceable. Something that still holds a void in my heart every day. Sometimes even the most minute things cause painful and heartfelt reminders of what could have been, and it's something I have to carry with me forever.  And I hate myself for that.

I lost my relationship, only to gain in back and struggle every day to get things back to the once blissful days we knew. To get back the joy the love and the laughter we filled every day with. There have been days that have been amazingly love filled, and others where I feel like the world is ending. I just want it all back the way it was, perfect in our own dysfunctional way.

I moved in with my Love during a tumultous time. A time of huge transition. A compound change.  A change that made sense but still, any change is tough.

I lost not 1 but 2 jobs and spent a better part of the year feeling useless and like less of a person because of it.  Not able to provide, or to help support the ones I love.

I ruined the credit I had just started to rebuild.  Joblessness ruined a lot of things.

I lost my grandfather, the only one I ever really knew, regardless of the blood running through our veins. And I am greatful for his almost 93 years on this Earth, and amazed he was lucid and active up until a month before he passed, but even knowing he was nearing a century in age, his death was hard.

Although, being able to be at his bedside, to sing to him, to share stories and memories with him in his final hours, to give him permission to let go made it a little easier. I wish I had been able to have any sort of closure with the death of my father, maybe then his being gone wouldnt plague me so much every day.

I realized things about myself this past year. Not great things. Things I should have realized and changed long ago, and perhaps things that have hindered my life and left me in a sort of limbo these 32 years.

I have been through emotional hell this year. More so I think than any other year I can recall. Not all bad mind you, but a rollercoaster of every possible thing a person can feel. Up and down and twisted and writhing.

Now as we near the close of this year, all I want is to move forward.  To keep those in my life I chose to keep when I weeded out all those that were toxic.

To cut the chains of the past and move forward, free of past wrongs and thinking  positive. I want to take the losses I have had, the revelations about myself and I want to use them to make like better for not only myself but for all those I love in 2012.

I resolve to finish my degree, and within the first few weeks of 2012 do I start school in an effort to do so. And I am grateful for my Love for encouraging and pushing me to register.

I resolve to keep my job, a job I just got with a few weeks left in 2011 and to turn it into a career that I not only love but that I can be proud of. And so far I love love love it.

I resolve to be more patient, to try and think more before I speak. (I say this year after year and I still mean it)

To be a better mother, a better girlfriend, a better daughter, friend and colleague. To just be a better person.

I resolve to try to be as positive as humanly possible and try to not let the demons of my past haunt me any longed.

I choose to let go of everything I can't change or control anymore.  To steer my life in the direction I know in my heart it was meant to go.

I resolve to spend my life with the Love of mine.  Hopeful for that happy-ever-after that doesn't come in fairytales, but more like the ones in soap operas, after a shitload of adversity and strife, and coming out stronger and more in love than ever.

When you have hit the bottom, they say a there is no place to go but up right?

2012, I hope that's the case, I can't take any more of this shit.

(Oh and getting skinny and hot is on the list too.....you know, for good measure.)

Love,
Me