New Years Day night...the very first night it has resembled winter. There is a bite in the air that will instantly entice your hands to pull that zipper all the way to the wind pipe. It's been a pleasant holiday season, and an ending to a very eventful year. I got through college this year. I fought the urge to give up and pressed on in the power of God. I became an RN. I got a job working as an RN. God is good even when we think He is bad. I saw another side of myself this year. I saw an anger I had forgotten I was capable of. I literally gave life all I had left. At the end of this past year, I found myself standing on my feet again. My face left an imprint in the mud at my feet and the dirt remains caked on my face, but my legs are firm. My demons are beneath my shoes finally. The war was long and hard and I expended faith I didn't have to give and wound up unconscious in the arms of God...just as He had planned.
It was a very nice Christmas. I have much to be thankful for. But underneath that torn wrapping paper there is something still waiting for me. I try to get it out of my mind and haven't even thought about writing about it here until now. I didn't want it back. It is a not-so-distant memory of the phone ringing just after my son opened his Nintendo Wii on Christmas morning 2009. The other side of all of that electricity and wires was my little brother Joe and I knew what had happened. Christmas was ruined. Forever, it would be synonymous with loss and confusion.
Christmas Day 2010. I made a choice to make Christmas off limits to any feeling at all. I felt it at times, but pushed it out and turned it to anger. I would simply pretend it didn't happen and that is how I would survive. Just close my eyes and open them when I saw light beyond the darkness of my eyelids.
Christmas Day 2011. I came to this day with the same plan. This time it doesn't work and I realize this every day since Christmas. Under that paper torn in happiness, is a very real and serious issue I have to come to grips with...My brother killed himself on Christmas and I cannot rewind any tape to bring him back. I have tried not to write about him so much because I know it hurts some of his family to read, and I feel like I am whining all the time. I look at my blog stats and see that there is an influx of people visiting my blog on Will's birthday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve expecting me to spill out here. I haven't written on any of these days this year because I don't know what to say that I already haven't. I am sad, but things are getting better. It hurts to think beyond that. It is easier to pretend. But doing that is forgetting the whole point as to why I began writing for any random person to read. I put down my personal journal I had kept for 12 years and decided to bring whoever wanted to go with me on a journey through my experience of being a human being in a dying world. It doesn't make sense to keep my thoughts and experiences from this blog. For those who read regularly, you know that I don't know all the answers. I don't know most of the answers. Sometimes I feel like I don't know any of the answers. I just write things down as I see or feel them. I try to do this in honesty because I am tired of being lied to and I thing you are too. This is me, take me or leave me behind, I will continue because of the power and grace of Jesus.
2012, I am going to deal with whatever is waiting for me under that paper. And I am gonna share it with you.
Here is a list of other things I plan to do in 2012:
Write a fiction book.
Become a part of the normal masses that venture out into the night to work and return again when it is dark, and actually get used to it.
Stop doing things that my heart hurts after doing, like losing my temper and yelling at someone I love.
Crafting the most perfect batch of beer I have tasted.
Stop letting people that hate me for bad reasons effect me and the way I feel and think about them.
If I accomplish any one of these goals, I reckon I will be happier than I am right now.
Sing.
Migrate.
Thanks for reading...Z
