Today, I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around these concepts. We mark our lives by the passage of minutes, days, years... and it makes sense. We'd go crazy if we had no system of keeping track of time. That's not the part I don't understand. The thing is, life does not actually happen in these easily-delineated chunks of time. Today is January 1st. Today's date ends in /10, while yesterday's ended in /09. Today, I am a day older than I was at this time yesterday, but yesterday, I was still only a day older than the day before that.
My point is - none of my problems went away because I participated in the ritual of welcoming the new year. I'm not arguing with anyone who embraces a feeling of starting over, a virtual reset button as Danielle suggests. If you are able to feel hope and renewal, please don't take this to mean I'm here to rain on your parade. I'm glad that you can. I'm just saying that I, at this moment, on this first day of this new year, feel no such sensation. The things that made my heart ache yesterday still make it ache today. The things I was worried about yesterday, I am still worried about today. It's just another day that I got out of bed, made the coffee, and started going about my business.
Last year, I felt differently. Last year, I said, "this is going to be the year." This time, I have no expectation that anything is going to be different because it falls between January 1 and December 31 of the year 2010. Things will happen, and they'll last a minute, or 42 minutes. They'll last a day or 87 days, 2 hours, 8 minutes, and 22 seconds. They'll last a year or 3.94 years.
Todd pointed out to me just now that this is why Anniversaries were invented. These allow us to assign an event its own New Year's Day. It's a point, to be sure, but it's the same thing to me. People don't unfailingly die on their birthdays. Relationships don't always fail on the anniversaries of their beginnings. Life just does not happen according to the calendar.
I wish I believed that today's date meant something. I wish I saw that reset button. Instead, what I see are the dishes that were in the sink last year. I have the same hopes I had last year. I am brought to tears by the same things that made me cry last year. So what? Last year was only yesterday and tomorrow won't be much different.
