Looks Just Like New…or a Summary of Uncertain Events

I can now refer to 2010 as last year and part of me is upset by this. I liked 2010. We were buddies. We went kayaking, got a new job, started an amazing blog. We tasted wine in Rhode Island. We went to class, overslept on weekends, shopped frequently at the Target down the road. We went to Los Angeles and San Francisco. We bought bowling shoes and wrote columns. We sang at a wedding. We ate Boston cream pie. We turned 23. But we suffered, too. We had to let go of people we loved. We had to learn of family sickness. We cried. We felt guilty.

But life is a series of ups and downs: The cliché roller-coaster. The mountain range. The back of a stegosaurus. 

So life then, is now climbing upward. I will graduate in May with my Master’s in Publishing. I will go to Europe in June. And I will work at the job I just recently attained. Sure, I know at some point I will make a mistake. I’ll upset my boss because I’ve done something amazingly wrong. I’ll get sick (as I always do). I’ll probably bowl under 100. But, honestly, why the hell should I worry about that now?

As for this vacation to Florida, I am having a wonderful time. I already feel as if unplugged from Boston. I sleep in (a miracle), I barely think about homework or appointments, I bask in 70 degrees Fahrenheit weather (God, the snow is going to suck). And for now, I’ve done so much: I drove all the way from Boston (with the wonderful company of Thomas). I avoided a blizzard. I visited my family in Maryland and played the best game of Apples to Apples ever. I saw my Orlando friends and Miami friends. I celebrated Christmas under a semi-dilapidated tree. I went to Disney and reconnected with my nephew (who also knows me as Bear, the stuffed toy with the awful French accent, see accents). I watched my friend as she danced outside my car. I ate breakfasts and lunches and dinners with people I missed. I stuck my toes in the Miami sand, then jumped, without care, into the cold of the water. I wore my L.A. dress on New Year’s. I felt shock at seeing my 14-year-old brother almost as tall as me. I ate cake for breakfast. I stayed up until almost 6 a.m. I laughed. Tried on and paid for a bridesmaid’s dress. Laughed more. I ate 12 grapes and burned the bad stuff of 2010 by setting a doll on fire.

So the bad of 2010, well, is now in ashes.

2011, here I come.

An on-the-spot poem about burning away my troubles in the form of a doll:

Little doll,
I stuck
my bad things up your sleeves:
sadness,
loneliness,
the thing you did
that made you feel so guilty,
and covered you in gasoline,
struck a match, 
and watched you turn to flames,
while fireworks popped 
and banged,
and all my troubles,
burned brighter
than the ball 
in New York City.