Depending on how action-packed tomorrow is, this may be my last blog entry for 2006. Where did the year go?! To hell in a hand basket if you ask me. It started with New Year's Eve in London with Howard who promptly earned the name "fun Bobby" for how engaging his company was sober. Fresh out of rehab, he met me at the Paddington Train station with a surly expression and lethargic demeanor. At midnight, we toasted hot chocolate while watching The London Eye light up with fireworks... on TV. Yes, I flew across the Atlantic Ocean for this. The best part was his magnanimous toast, "To the end of the worst fucking year of my life." Here, here! I'll drink to that. Tosser.Upon my return from England (don't worry I don't intend to recount the whole year in this one entry, ahem, I have some semblance of a life), Mo picked me up at JFK. Poor sap. He really loved me but he couldn't get past the fact that I had one, been with other men and two, I had a mind of my own. Bless his hairy mole.
In February, I lost one of my childhood friends to breast cancer the same week my second nephew was born- a profound reminder of the circle of life.
In March, I got my dream field producing job and spent most of the rest of the year crisscrossing the U.S. to exciting places such as Greenville, South Carolina and Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. In April, Mo and I tried again. "Is Mo still hanging around like a bad smell?" Howard had asked. And, yes, indeed he was. That proved a miserable exercise in self-flagellation for us both. When he told me he was "ready" to introduce me to his parents (he had already met mine when they were visiting from Texas) who lived as far away as Jersey City, I had a panic attack. In a completely unrehearsed sentence during a maddening debate about something as trivial as where I wanted to go for Labor Day weekend, I blurted out, "You don't stimulate me intellectually or physically!" As my aunt would say, "There was pin drop silence."
I spent the remainder of the summer and the fall becoming smarter about me and men and life. During a long run along the Hudson River around the time of my 34th birthday, I had an epiphany. Why are you waiting for something to happen, something to "fall into place" before you start living your life? The life you have chosen and constructed for yourself. The life that makes you stop in the middle of a busy New York City intersection (while the crosswalk is safe), stare down the stretch of urban splendor and marvel at the fact that you have made it in Manhattan.
The recent calamity in dating that is my short-lived romance with Boston made me question that self-affirmation. But as the year draws to a close and I see my friends and family or even hear from you guys via a comment on my blog, a quick text or email; I'm reminded of it all again. So thanks for humoring me in this journey of self-discovery, of laughing and cringing at all the right (and wrong) times. Here's to 2007, here's to you.
Lest you think I'm completely self-absorbed, I wanted to post a link to an article by the foreign editor of Scotland's Sunday Herald that I think perfectly encapsulates the "carnage and chaos" that marked 2006.
http://www.sundayherald.com/life/people/display.var.1096725.0.2006_carnage_chaos.php
If you don't care to read, remember Darfur, keep it on your radar or we will bear witness to another Rwanda.
