This is where everyone writes their resolutions. Their hopes and goals for themselves in the New Year.  I ain’t putting that pressure on myself because I know that shit don’t work.  For me, anyway.  That’s all right.  I’ll take a moment to reflect and write, anyways, because it’s been on my mind.

I feel like I reset my whole life in 2016, though it was put into motion long before.  I upturned the whole apple cart.  I hurt people I love. I failed in so many ways, and the worst was walking away from a man who put up with me, who took care of me and our son all these years, and I struggle to deal with that upheaval.  2016 dealt me a “change” card. I took it and ran, and it’s hard to sleep with what I left behind.

I mourn the celebrities we lost, but they weren’t in my shoes or his shoes or your shoes all this time. Tonight is the end and a beginning, and yet I always felt like the true new year began when I went back to school in September.  More horror.

Tonight I am cleaning my bathroom top to bottom, and I will have some champagne at the prescribed time.  I look back on a life before and after I married Mike.  I miss my son.

This year I will share my fears on the page, and might, maybe, confess my sins for the record, too.  This year I will send more work out into the world because rejection just gets easier the more you take it.  This year I will try to do something about the thin skin I was born with. Perhaps I can toughen it because my armor just hasn’t been enough.  This year I learned that I can join a club, some all-grrl gang and force my view down your throat or beat you to death with it because you ain’t hearing us otherwise… or I can doctor the wounds. I can record the voices and stand up for the ones who need it most. I get to decide what Change looks like, and it doesn’t have to tear Justice limb from limb.

This year I will root for the Seattle Seahawks because I’m done with that other team. On a side note, I hope my son learns what “team” means, and that nobody gets a medal for being a lone wolf.  I hope they hand out medals to lone wolf parents, by the way, but I’d better not  hold my breath.

This year I will try to participate more in the community. Change can’t happen just by posting comments on a web page.

And I’m not asking any more of myself right now because that’s a pretty good plate so far.