New Years Ghosts

Happy new year. The promise and hope of the unknown, we (I) tend to quantify new starts with new years. In the past i had always thought the new year should start in the fall, the beginning of school, the beginning of change. I felt that to celebrate the coming of the new year in the depths of winter was sort of anti-climactic, after all very little was about to change. I would return to school and what?

The new years parties of my youth were always a disappointment and i remember simply driving around, one party to the next, looking for something exciting. Something more than flowing alcohol and crowds of people loudly mixing together. I could never put my finger on the disappointment or anxiety it caused to have this need to celebrate and share the new year in the context of a deep and painful sense of loneliness and exclusion. My own demons i am sure and as hard as i fight them and push them back they stay with me. Sometimes in groups of people, all friends, with common interests and parallel lives, i find myself on the fringes looking into the circle and watching them interact. The beginning of a new year has seemed to be an exaggeration of the demons i faced. A new year never wiped out my insecurities and fears and it never panned out to starting new. I don't know if i expected a new start or there is some sort of subliminal propaganda suggesting it. I can't say, it is a jumble in my memory and experience.

Today i will go to work--work that is slowly burning out. I have a mild hangover and my family is still sleeping. Sleep deep light of my world, the new year is upon us and the promise of change hangs lightly in the air. Delicate as glass in its place in the air, plot the course ahead with care and precision. I am afraid that if we stray to far the excitement of the change we hope for will fall and shatter.

Outside, i hear the wind beat against the walls of our house and knock the wind-chimes against the post on the the deck. The rain like small pebbles against the hard dirt and mixed asphalt of the alley. The new year looms ahead and the dreams we have are available and real. I fear most of all that we fall short. I hope with all my heart that our dreams come true.