This past year is proof that sometimes, life can take away your everything and if you stay standing and catch your breath, if your crying is soft enough to not draw too much attention, you’ll get it all back. Last year was swaying to the beat in a stranger’s basement, pressed up against nameless bodies, beer in hand. Last year was watching my family fall apart right in front of me, the cracked pieces becoming smaller and smaller until they were too tiny to put back together again, my fingers bleeding from trying anyway. Last year was posing for pictures between girls with bad reputations I didn’t know well, wearing skimpy clothes that left me not knowing myself well, either. Last year was true depression hitting me hard in the face, leaving me weary and bruised and unable to get out of bed in the mornings. Last year was a boy with blue eyes who made me laugh again, who held my hand and tugged me to my feet and wiped the tears from my cheeks. Last year was laying on the beach in the warm sunlight and even in the cool moonlight, toes in the sand and in the salty ocean, grins wide and genuine. Last year meant stepping out of my comfort zone and rediscovering myself when I had previously been lost for so long among waves of overshadowing disappointment. Last year, I lost my balance and myself and then I found it all waiting patiently for me in his soft lips, beneath the warmth of his fingertips, realizing that nothing had ever been lost to begin with, only misplaced.
I’m stepping into 2012 with clenched fists, ready to fight off whatever obstacles life has in store for me, pursed lips, for kissing my blue-eyed boy at the stroke of midnight and every day following, and a renewed sense of self, everything stretching so far out in front of me that I have to squint to make it all out.
