2011 Wasn't So Bad, Kind Of Like Under-Cooked Broccoli, Which is Good For You, If Not A Little Difficult To Actually Swallow

“Courage allows the successful woman to fail 

and learn powerful lessons

from the failure

so that in the end

she didn't fail at all”
~ Maya Angelou

As I was cleaning my room this morning (dusting my countless shelves and getting severely freaked out at the amount of dirt I live with on a daily basis) I came across a list of things I wanted 2011 to bring. Ha ha ha. 

The end of 2010 had me making big wishes. I wanted some payback from the shitty 365 days I felt I had just experienced. I deserved this and that, and certainly wasn't about to spend the entirety of 2011 alone. So I made this list of desires, rolled it up into a little scroll, tied it with string, and set it in a box with incense and "magic" stones and a bunch of other shit I had been convinced to buy at some point in order to change my life. When I unrolled it this morning, the childishness of some of those wishes struck me.

If life is a progression toward knowledge, than a true sign you're doing it right is to cringe at certain things you were sure of in the past. I cringe a lot at my past incarnations - probably more than I should (every other month I desperately want to erase 75% of this blog), but it was strange to be holding a piece of green paper that was only a year old and already feeling like it was an ancient relic.

A lot changed this year, but most of it was inaudible. Like a silent tsunami, it quietly but forcefully cleared away stuff I thought I needed, thought I wanted, and clung to just for the hell of it. It wasn't exactly fun at all times -- picking yourself apart and then putting yourself together, if only for a brief moment in your current timeline - is painful shit. It's lonely. It's exhausting. And the examination process can be relentless. 

There were no men to distract me. Literally. Never have I had a year so bereft of the hot, male species. If you would have told my 25-year-old self I would soon experience a year where men ceased to take up large portions of my brain, I would have probably melted into a pile of disbelieving tears. But it was actually fine. Especially because what I had been yearning for for years can't truly come from another person anyway. I have no idea how long this aloneness will continue, but I can't say I'm scared. Loneliness doesn't last.

There were no giant career success to distract me either. I got farther than ever before in some ways, but alas, the major wins and signed contracts were not handed to me. Instead, I watched them slip between my fingers, shook off what simply couldn't be changed and only stress-ate half a box of chocolate fudge cookies. I wanted to quit writing just once or twice. A lack of sore losing sobs and chocolate overdoses is a marked improvement for someone who used to take every "no" like a personal punch in the face.

It sounds boring, 2011. Quiet and plodding a little bit repetitive. It was, in certain ways, but 2011 was also a game changer. I'll never be the same, my thinking will be forever altered, and I've found a way to love a body and a mind that have plagued me since I was old enough to know I was born imperfect.

I don't think I'll be making any wishes for 2012 (except for the one I make every night involving Ryan Gosling and a hot tub), because most wishes are wastes of time. They're unfilled desires, paper-thin and pointless. What I will do, however, is live as fully and as capably and as gratefully as I can - without gripping the outcome in a chokehold.

I will be deliberate in the new year.

Loving, open, determined, spirited and ready.

I will not hope for a good 2012 -- I will be part of the process of creating it.

How about you?