New Year, Day 2

Well, I have to say, so far ...... meh. I have come to realize that I am not a big fan of New Year's. As holidays go, it just doesn't move me - it's because I am now getting to that part of life where the changing of one year to the next is more about the end of things than the beginning. I find myself looking back at who or what has been lost to us in the year that is ending. I find myself recognizing the parts of my life that are changing in ways that make me feel melancholy. I become sentimental and cry a lot and think of could've-should've-would've things and then look ahead at what I want to try to change and it just feels tiring.

Damn, I'm a lot of fun here, aren't I?

Before you start worrying about me - DON'T. I am fine, really I am. But just not all cheery and WOO-HOO IT'S A NEW YEAR!!! Perhaps it's my proximity to the big five-oh that makes me more aware of upcoming difficulties than upcoming possibilities. Well, that's an overstatment. I am not MORE aware of difficulties, but twenty - even ten - years ago, I didn't think about things related to aging at all, and now I do. And that's a sobering change.

A lot of people have been reminiscing about where they were on the eve of 2000, a decade ago. I was still married, hadn't started homeschooling yet, as the boys were 2 and 5, I loved being a mom but not so much being a wife (though I worked really, really hard at hiding that fact from myself and can only truly see it now from a distance.) I wasn't working outside the house, I was very VERY involved in my church, I spent my days going to ECFE classes.

Wow, not much at all that is still the same. I'm still a mom. Not a wife any more, not homeschooling any more, not going to ECFE (or any) classes any more. Not going to church any more (though ironically now work at one). Have a job outside the home.

The people who were my friends then are now people I rarely, if ever, see. Other than a few solid "forever friends" who will be with me until I die there is almost no one who I called friend at that time who still warrants that title. It's not that there were huge falling outs (fallings out?) just that those were friendships based on proximity, and shared station in life, and now that I have moved on both literally and figuratively, the friendships have faded away. And the people who I now rely on and spend time with weren't anywhere on my radar screen a decade ago.

Which naturally leads me to wonder if they will still be in my life a decade from now.

[Edited to add...] However, I also have one more significant difference in my life now that didn't exist a decade ago. This New Year's Eve I was (and still am) in the company of an amazing man with whom I am completely, mutually, marvelously, in love. And you know, that makes up for a lot :-)

So, happy new year, all.