New Year, Same Me
Forget the old adages: if you're going to change the world, stop trying to change yourself.
We all think we can become a better person.
I spent New Year’s Eve Eve wriggling in pain as the accumulation of nights falling asleep on the couch, then crawling to bed 2 hours later to pass out at odd angles has added up to being stiff as a board, aching, with very little ability to look both ways crossing the street. I just close my eyes and pray to god.
We drove up to Westchester to my sister’s house and I lamented these aches, out loud in the car, to which Adam- my ever-loving husband- shouted: Stop being old! And I harumphed like the adult I am, turning with my whole body to face the passenger side window since my head had no independent mobility of its own.
Eventually we became friends again, though I am still old with a young face- which you’d think would get me some respect around here, but it does not. I managed to make it through family time with lots of pillows and only conversing out of the side of my mouth, straight on or not at all. Then I fell down the stairs. It was just one soft sock, some beige carpet and six consecutive thuds that sounded truly more violent than they were.
As I gathered my thoughts prostrate with my left foot in my sister’s chestnut buffet, my family gathered around to gasp at me from above and ask what happened and if I would survive or die of embarrassment while Adam pointed in my face and laughed. I shrugged and said I’ve actually done much worse before. I was hoping the fall would knock my neck back into shape but no luck.
On New Year’s Eve proper I went to yoga with my astrologist healer Nami, which means that I stretched my body in ways I stopped doing as soon as I gave birth then laid in a dark room with my legs in the air and Tibetan singing bowls in my ears while my thoughts raced around my mind, each one vying for my attention like show dogs on a circus float. I mostly thought of pizza and all the many different, delicious kinds of slices I would encounter on my way home and how I was forbade from eating any of them- Adam has declared January a pizza-free month and I must abide. He might sound severe but you must understand this is the kind of support I need: brutal, unsympathetic rules from a young, hot hockey coach determined to transform me from an entitled, couch-loving pizza princess to a published author and professional athlete within the year. Adam believes and I must, too. If not because I am capable of belief in myself, then at least because I am capable of devotion to our partnership. These are the qualifications of our love. After a year of marriage-that is what I know.
All of this is to say I’ve really been dredging up the past recently; as the year drew to a close, I was having involuntary flashbacks of ex’s and ex-friends and ex-mentors and every New Year from 2009 until now. Each one was a frantic free-for-all as I desperately hurled myself into a gut-reno rehabilitation of my body and mind- determined to become someone finally worthy of all the many things I wanted. Each year was an opportunity to meditate for 30 days and green-juice and Marie-Kondo my way to an imaginary goal I was too afraid to set- so overachieving and averse to failure I am that I’d preferred to remain suspended in ice- decluttering- rather than disappoint myself or anyone else with tangible objectives. In any case, this is just to say I’m done with all that good girl shit: I love living atop a base layer of disarray, building my hectic life one ill-advised creative venture at a time. The year changes but I will stay the same: disobedient, distracted and always hungry for something I can’t quite put a finger on. The only way to fix my aching back is to lay on this prickly acupressure mat, trying to relax.
And now with my loving husband, perfect baby and middle-aged kittens in tow-
Year of the Water Rabbit here we go.