not enough in the end

"Even those wild memories of his mad youth left him unmoved, just as during his last debauch he had exhausted his quota of salaciousness and all he had left left was the marvelous gift of being able to remember it without bitterness or repentance."*

I like New Years. A lot of American holidays (yes I'm biased because I am geographically deficient) carry a certain amount of nostalgia but New Years Eve happens to be one of the holidays in which it is totally acceptable to talk about it. Every night at the end of the year people make lists about what they'd like to do differently in the forthcoming year, but all of the lists are tainted by what they've done wrong in the year before. Personally, I'd like to not be an asshole or do anymore dumb shit in 2012, but I'm only saying that because I know I've done enough of it
this past year.

We want to do better because we've done so much wrong. I don't want to sound cynical because I like wallowing in it, so to speak. I hate the sting of nostalgia but it's easily accessible for me. After all, this blog is named after a novel dedicated to nostalgia. I rode my bike home tonight through the growing fog (the night, has been- perfect) and I missed a few people so bad that it hurt. Really missed them. You, you might be reading this and think, "me? surely not me," but really, I mean you. I think about people I'd really never want to talk to again, but I miss them. I could blame it on Time but I know at the end of the day I'm just as responsible for pushing certain people away from me. No, that's the sweet version.

The bad version is that I've been a horrible person to people that put their trust and their hopes on me, and I couldn't be the girl they wanted me to be. I don't just mean boys, that sounds like the right answer but it's not (and they should take some of the blame of putting all of their hopes on me because that is, after all, a product of the Patriarchy which is too big of a footnote to include here) but I also mean my mom who wanted me to go to graduate school and my dad who wanted me to go to law school and my friends from out of state who expected my band to tour and my bosses who expected me to stick around all summer even when I wasn't making money (everyone seems upset when I go off and do my own thing, and I know at some point I'll stick around, I promise).

I want 2011 to end with a big, wet, warm apology to everyone that has been disappointed in me, but I don't know if it would matter at this point. I rode my bike home thinking about the friends I can't call anymore, not just from my own volition but also just from Time and Distance, and I wish I could wake up tomorrow in the new year and be able to. The shitty thing is, is that I won't be able to pick up the phone and make it better. Sure, tomorrow morning I'm going to go meet my dad out by the highway. We're going to drink a beer and he's going to ask me what I'm doing, but he sure as hell won't ask me if I'm happy. Just the same, happy new year to you, wherever you are.

*One Hundred Years of Solitude, pg. 341