2012: The Year that I Would Like to Invite to Suck a Giant Bag of Dicks

I want to start off this blog post in some gracious way, some way that shows how enlightened I am and how in tune I am with peace and understanding and all that shit, but one of my very annoying strengths is that I am compulsively honest.  So I have to start this way:  

2012 was a shitty fucking year.  

It was as shitty as they come.  I have not lived long, I am in my 28th year on this spinning ball of earth.  But I have seen a thing or two since I have been a resident here, and even I am surprised that this year has been the most painful year of my existence.  I don’t mean to be dramatic, I just know that I need to be honest so I can shake it off and try to have a good 2013.  
I know that the marking of the new year is very arbitrary, but it is a nice cultural marker and I would use anything- really any excuse- to mark an end to this shit fest.  Watching my dad die in my childhood home, before my very eyes, was easy peasy compared to this year.  

I only knew my dad for 11 years, and for most of that time he was very sick.  So we never had a solid relationship.  But I knew my grandfather always.   I am very close with my grandparents because of my father’s illness.  They often cared for me and my brother while my dad was in the hospital.  They were my refuge and I consider their home to be my true home. 

My grampa died this year and it was just the worst thing ever.  Not only did it just suck that he died, but it kicked up all this old shit and ripped open old wounds that hadn’t really healed from when my dad died.  So I spent most of the year feeling like a vulnerable and sad and lost little kid with all this grief that I was trying to feel.  And I did this with some amazing support from people who love me and I did it with little support from people that I expected to support me.  And that made it all confusing and awful and yet I made it because lots of people kept telling me that they loved me, even if I didn’t want to hear it from them in particular.  

And as I felt like a little kid all I could do was look at my gramma, my Sun and Moon and Stars and Earth, and just torture myself over the fact that she will not be with me forever and she is my last link on this earth that keeps me from being an orphan.  And I am really trying not to do that, but you have to know that when a kid loses a parent at a young age, their ability to be terrified about losing people is pretty impressive.  I wish there was a competition for this because I would have a gold medal in terror.  I may have collapsed in tears a few times this year yelling out, “Everyone I love, I lose.”  And I wasn’t even being dramatic about this- it is just a theme of my life. 

This year was also shitty because people I assumed would be around to support me through the shit, just did not show up.  My heart was smashed habitually.  A true friend devastated me with so many lies and let my heart drop so many times I swear to God I heard that thing shatter.  And I cannot go into the heart break and all its details, but I have grown up a lot.  And in the few places that I was an optimist before, I am no longer.  

This life is so hard and I am so bitter about that.

I have continued my life long battle with my faith and I am trying to hammer out what I believe.  My grampa’s death re-sparked this.  I heard my family members say the most asinine and stupid things as they tried to comfort themselves during and after his death- and I let them.  But I rolled my eyes so hard I almost sprained my poor optic nerve.  I cringed as they spoke about his funeral service in front of him as he was in hospice, and I don’t really give a shit if he isn’t suffering anymore- I am currently suffering here without the old-right-wing-nut-job-republican-coot in my life.  The spouting about God’s will and heaven and what-have-you did not sound theologically sound and it brought me zero comfort.  So that left me all bothered and agitated and angry and bitter and I am trying to figure out what the heck I believe about this world and God and who God is and who I am and what that all is.

Lots of personal shit went down in my life that I would love to word vomit about but I really cannot get into it.  I did overcome a giant personal issue this year- YAY ME.  But there are other things that just took their toll on me.  And now I am so damned sick.  I have had so much sickness, and then so much sickness return, and then shingles has been the icing on top.  I was diagnosed with it almost 4 weeks ago and I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that I am still in so much pain and I am abusing so much ibuprofen to get through the days and nights.  So my body is so angry and sad and tired and I just can’t lie to myself about it anymore.  

Oh yeah- money trouble and debt abound at our house this year.  And lots of our stuff is just on the brink of breaking and we don't have the money to save to try to replace it when it breaks.  We need some manna from heaven at this point and we are hoping that our shoes will last 40 years, but with the way my husband runs- that is not going to happen.  There just never is enough and we owe everyone and their momma some money.  Yes, some folks have been so generous to us this year- and without them we would be in deeper water.  But it feels so awful to be up to your eyeballs in debt and have no wiggle room in your pocket.  Scarcity terrifies me.  And I am so tired of the scarcity.  I am so tired of it all.

And this year I continued to struggle with myself.  This has been a  lifelong dance of trying to shake off all the stupid shit I learned and trying to love myself just how I am and where I find myself.  I berate myself for not being thankful, but then I get all messed up when I lie to myself that I am fine because I didn’t let myself just be angry and complain when I needed to.  It is a horrendous and confusing cycle that I still do not have a handle on.  Even writing this entry makes me feel bad for not seeing more of the good that happened this year.  I do see it, I swear I do.  So many people were good to me this year and loved me and were so generous and loving to me.  But that doesn’t take away that this year hurt so goddamned much. 

I have been waiting for a good year for a long time.  I really hope this one is better.  It really doesn’t have to do too much to be better, but I need it to do so much and be better.  And I hate that bullshit that says that I think my way into making it better.  A positive attitude is swell, but fuck that thinking.  I am super pessimistic and I have had great years.  Grace is that even the Grinch and Debbie Downer can have good years, and I believe in grace.  So fuck everyone that says I need to be positive in order to get better.  Shingles will suck the positive right out of you and I don’t want to hear objections unless you have had it.  My gramma’s sister in law said, and I quote directly, that when she had shingles she, “Wanted to die.”  You can’t think yourself happily out of neurological pain, friends.  You just can’t.  

So- here is to 2013.  Hoping for a year of grace.  I only have a string of hope intact still (and bravo to me for having that little bit of string left) and I am hoping that happiness and wiggle room come for people that need it.  Because we need it so badly.  I hope there is some rest for the weary.  I hope there is some relief for us and regeneration and renewal for all of us that have had so much devastating loss.  And dammit, I need a vacation.