On 2008, In 2009

The beginning of a new year sets forth an immovable procession of mental triggers and casual crises that disguise themselves as pragmatic resolutions to do greater things for no other reason than the passage of time and its cycle as it appears on the calendar. You become reflective about the challenges of the year past--the mistakes you have made, the things you have learned and the things you have achieved. Rarely though, do we recall our own resolutions from last year and rarely do we check to see just how well we did compared to what we intended to achieve when this feeling bore down on us the last time the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve. Sure, we may have been particularly resolute and even scrawled the resolutions of 2008 on a napkin somewhere, lest ye forget, but as the year wears on, the trials and tribulations of everyday life become more important than your prospects for the future as they appeared in the past. Then, before you know it, you're using that napkin to wipe up a coffee spill on a crappy February morning and your goals for the year get pitched into the trash alongside a sopping wet newspaper and a box of dollar store Valentine's Day cards. But that's okay, because really, even if you had written them down and kept them somewhere safe, you didn't count on all these other things happening to you throughout the year when you first made those resolutions. How could you? Life proves to grow exponentially more complicated every year and if you can't learn and adapt rapidly enough to keep up with it, you'll be caught in the undertow with the ever-expanding pool of stragglers already lost.

To conquer this, I identified the problem early and in 2008, I made no resolutions; I began with a clean slate and instead used the time of reflection to gather a picture of myself. I wanted to know who I had become and instead of thinking about what happened in 2007, I looked well past that and remembered the last time that I really knew who I was. Then, I compared it to who I had become and realized that I had never quite done that before. I had been so caught up in the veritable hurricane of my psychological environment that I didn't realize how much I had changed or in what way, if any, it was happening.

I've found that the person I was has been beaten out of me--against my will at first, but by the end, embracing the change proved to be the only way to keep myself together. But I retained a lot of the personal strength I earned earlier in my life and to my own surprise, I find that I want to be a different person now. Maybe it was the time I spent in virtual solitude, maybe it's because of how much I've learned about the sheer overwhelming size of the planet and the people in it, but whatever it is, I am oddly content.

2008 began with a lot of new things for me. Maybe not "new" so much as things that I just hadn't had in a long time. It began in a new house on Bowness Road with a nice little garage and a simple but charming interior decor. Mitchell and I moved there in December and I still had what I considered a relatively new job at the City. Typically, as long as I consider my job to have little to no security, it's still new to me. I also began the year with a sense of having actually achieved something, after years of doing almost nothing. I didn't get my CD done like I intended to, but I pretty much single-handedly ran At Melee's End, which is the kind of event that performs a real public service to a degree that I'd never truly realized in my own life. And finally, I began the year with new friends--real friends, not just a bunch of people that you meet, which happens every year. In a way, I didn't even remember what it felt like to be socially accepted and it has helped to inspire other feelings of tranquility and contentment that I thought I may never feel again.

With everything going so well, it was difficult not to make resolutions at its outset. But I guess that's what I learned by climbing the steep staircase so many times only to get kicked right back down--I know how this depression game works, I've conquered it. But I didn't know all of its moves until 2008 came to a close; I still had a few weak spots that I knew to be well-guarded, but weak nonetheless. So, about halfway through the year, just as I was reaching for the mezzanine level of happiness, I was kicked back down to the basement again and I remember the tumble vividly. Thankfully, I was ready to be kicked and the inevitability of psychological duress didn't factor in, but I didn't count on burning up those weak spots on the way down. Oh and burn, did they ever--cauterized the wound, frankly. I don't know of anything that "heals all wounds" the way time is supposed to, but I do know that you can burn the fuck out of them until all that remains is a scabby, carbonized patch of scar tissue.

And I know this all sounds kinda negative, but it's really not; I guess that's part of what's changed about me. I've always considered myself a realistic person, but I used to be able to spin it into writing however I would choose. Now, even my optimism comes off as pessimistic to the ears of most. Although I seem to be reflecting on the year negatively, I prefer to think of it as a strength exercise and the perceived negativity is only representative of a greater challenge overcome, which yields a greater reward.

Speaking of rewards, I was also granted actual vacation time in 2008--something that I didn't really have a concept of. I didn't really understand why people at work seemed to live for their vacation time as though they hated their jobs so much that a day at work was infinitely more debilitating than a day off. Back then, I still defined happiness with a bar that I had set far too high at far too early an age, wherein every day was a great day and it didn't matter if you had to work or not because you had so much to live for. Well, when I went on vacation, I guess the main thing that I learned was that it's okay to bring the bar down a little. It's okay to want less than what you once had--sometimes, you have to. It's better for you.

Additionally, it allowed me to live solely for myself for a change. After making so many deposits for so long, I decided to make a withdrawal from the karma bank and spent it ruthlessly on self-gratification. Although, I am a fundamentally selfless person (i.e. it is gratifying to me personally to do things for other people), so I did spend some of it on others where I could, but it was mostly my vacation and nobody else's. I drove out to Vancouver for a week to see Jodi and basically kill some leisure time and burn up vacation days on nothing as planned. Then I spent the most important two days in Victoria completely by myself; it still felt like home to me and I never used a map once even though I hadn't set foot on the island in many years. I also confirmed what I had known to be true for a long time but others had often doubted: Victoria is a special place for me for more reasons than the base association with Lindsey and that's not why I went back there. It represents a conquest for individual strength and independence that I won against all odds and the things that happened to me there form the foundation for who I have become, even though the frame may have changed.

The visit to Victoria wasn't nearly as heavy or emotional as I expected it to be and I'm glad for it. A lot of that can be attributed to being kicked down the stairs again shortly before leaving and rather than the vacation time just coming around as planned, it left me in a state where I needed one so badly that it couldn't have come at a better time. The trip to Victoria reaffirms my own position as to how I feel about the relationship I lost and the hundreds of unanswered questions about it. It hardens me to the reality of it all and convinces me that the rough mental challenges I've had to endure to cope with it have not been in vain, if a little on the time-consuming side. And above all, it leaves me comfortable with the knowledge that the next time I visit Victoria, there will only be one reason: because I want to.

I burned up the last of my vacation time in Peachland with Jon which also helped to answer a lot of unanswered questions about him and just why he's been so difficult to get ahold of. He remains a very strong friend who I am able to talk to, but he is very disconnected and I'm not sure he'll ever be as involved with the lives of me and my friends as he once was. However, just being able to see him was enough to bring that issue to rest and I now have a clearer picture of his role in my life--a role I had often overemphasized in the past few years.

Returning from my vacation, I really did feel empowered. I knew that I was returning to a landscape of my life that was far from perfect--and in some areas, hostile even. But I was ready for anything. And by anything, I mean I was ready to climb the staircase again with the full expectation of being kicked back down yet again. I still remembered that that's how the game is played, but this time I knew that falling down the stairs wasn't going to hurt one bit. I had no intention of sitting in a curled up heap at the bottom, no sir--I was just gonna stand up and start climbin' again! So I began, one foot after another. Left, right, left, right. By September, I was practically running and seemed to have climbed quite a bit higher than I had in a long while.

I'm still wary of the boot that could be coming around every corner, but as 2008 came to a close, I began to reflect on the truths that I had learned over the year. For instance, unhappy people don't know how to make other unhappy people better. It doesn't work, and I had been trying it for years. I live for other people, and so to be crippled of my ability to help others had a devastating effect on me and I didn't even know it was happening. Now, I've given myself some time and came full circle on a lot of my own issues that had been swimming around wildly for years and finally, I feel confident that I can make the lives of those that I care about that much better. In doing so, it fuels my own happiness and empowers me to do that much more.

At least that's what it looks like at the beginning, here, now, in 2009.