Old Lang Syne

The New Year us upon us and just in the knick of time if you ask me. It was touch and go there for awhile but I somehow managed to squeak through 2009 still breathing, my fingernails clinging to the edge of the cliff of life. However, every year when I am ready to move on to the next and wipe the slate clean, I am hit and hit hard with one last fuck you from the ending year – my birthday! I was born on December 31st. During my younger years it was a kick-ass time to have a birthday – everyone is in their most joist mood, champagne is flowing, people dancing at their best and in lieu of all that celebration I got to be the IT girl of the night! I had some amazingly fabulous birthdays! But that all came to an abrupt stop at the end my 29th year and a gray hair appeared on my head and I realized, gone are the days of birthday frivolity, enter the days of birthday wrinkle paranoia!

The worse part of it all is that I did this to myself. I wasn’t due to be born until January 2nd and instead I came two days early. I was a self-saboteur even in the womb. I made it so I cannot relish the ending of one year and enter the next with a newfound lease on life. No, because of my own self-destructiveness, when the clock strikes mid-night on January 1st those aren’t tears of joy running down my face welcoming the New Year!

I have to say it is exhausting to be depressed on New Years Eve. I, too, want to ring in the upcoming year with gusto instead of spending it worrying what being a year older means. I want to recapture the feeling on December 31st when I turned 17 and had to try and pretend I was sober talking to my parents all the while swaying into walls. I want to dance on the bar like I did on December 31st when I turned 21. I want to go to a beach party in Thailand like I did when on December 31st when I turned 24 (even though I had to go back to my hut sick). I want to be the last once dancing in a club like I did on December 31st when I turned 26! And I want to wake up January 1st hung-over just like I did on every January 1st until I turned 30! Hung-over, from drinks of joy not the ones I downed trying to dull the pain of aging.

And so I made a resolution for 2010. In the paranoid lead up to my birthday I started to realize that my age is as arbitrary as the date January 1st. It doesn’t mean anything unless you want it to. So I have decided that I am nothing years old and it is going to be a fabulous year! And at the end of it when everyone is singing and celebrating and ready with their resolutions I am going to be right there with them – drunk and dancing on a table!!!