makes you laugh a little slower / makes you talk a little lower

'bout the things you could not show her and...

It's been a long December, especially these last few nights. Maybe it's an annual thing, maybe it's something that everyone goes through at the end of the year. Maybe, but in any case I've been in the most introspective of moods lately, and my mind and heart are hopped up on insomnia and racing backwards in time. And what they keep dwelling on are a few recurring thoughts: I wish I could keep the judgment of people whose opinions I don't respect from plunging me into self-doubt. I wish I could have faith in the reciprocity between two people of privacy, honesty, and disclosure. I wish I could believe that hurt doesn't accumulate, but rather that it heals and leaves a souvenir scar--an anecdote rather than an eternally painful wound. I wish I just didn't care anymore, about so many things; I wish I cared about and remembered only those things that make me stronger, that make me happier.

A lot's happened this year (an understatement, if there ever was one). A lot of it's the kind of stuff I'll never post on anything on the web--things that sit in the most tender and vulnerable part of me, the part that, like a newborn or perhaps injured animal, shies away from bright lights and prodding. But this I can say: It's been a year of pain and illness, of fear, anxiety and transition, of utter confusion, of sinking to ugly depths of sadness, hurt, self-loathing, shame. It's also been a year of sheer joie de vivre in its purest form: of beautiful sunsets, of wishing days would never end, of the genuine giving and receiving of the dearest aspects of this funny animal called life: love, trust, happiness, and yes, forgiveness. And the tail end of the year has smoothed out from the EKG-spikes of emotional turmoil that marked Spring into the loveliest and sweetest of lives I could have ever imagined for myself.

I remember listening to Patty Griffin's One Big Love over and over again a couple of summers ago. It was a rough summer for me in many ways, like the first part of this year was. One Big Love was an unlikely anthem for a heartbroken 21-year-old--Landslide would have been more appropriate--but there was something about it that just held so much hope for me; it made me feel as if maybe, just maybe, the act of surrendering to something bigger than myself was in store for me.

And I guess that's what this all is... In all this insomniac introspection, maybe what I'm realizing that 2006 was all about surrendering, of giving myself not only to the good, but the potential bad, too. And so everything I've thought and felt has helped lead me to this moment, now. Everything has made me stronger, happier. And so I need to remember and care about all of it, because it's part of this new me in this new life that I've come to love.

No sense defending your honor
Just go on and kiss him if you wanna
Everything before is gone or going somewhere.

I guess I'm taking my chances
Giving up the ring, throwing in the gloves
I guess I'm taking my chances
Trading in my things for a couple wings on a
Little white dove
And one big love, one big love.
I don't know where we are
and I don't care.
And now we're out of gas
and riding on air
And one big love, on big love.

Happy New Year. Akemashite Omedetou.