Dude. I feel like you've been hanging in the shadows a bit. One moment you're on the way, and the next moment -- or so it seems -- you're leaving. It's my fault, really. I should have paid more attention to you. I should have slowed down, stopped to look at you from a different angle, analysed you, explored you. Instead, I got caught up in living and you drifted by while I was hardly noticing.
I have to say, 2012, you're not my favourite year. We don't part as best friends, that's for sure. But we're definitely not enemies, either. There are things you failed to provide, but there are many many things you brought with you, too: opportunities for writing, learning, working, and being challenged. I'm especially thankful for doors that opened onto new chances to learn from clever people, and the privilege/burden/adventure of getting to do some brain-moulding of my own -- not wisely or well, but with gusto at least.
While spending your year, 2012, I let slip old habits which I'd once thought very important, and formed others that I hope might stick around a little better. Some friendships got shuffled around in the busyness of the everyday humdrum, and suffered for it. Other friendships -- some of them surprising -- blossomed and deepened into very cool things (it's always the unexpected ones). Still other relationships -- the long-term ones, the friends-forever ones -- grew solidly and well with only the much-loved, occasional watering and sunshine of face-to-face meetings.
2012, you answered some questions I hadn't even realised I'd been asking, some that had been floating around in the back of my mind and heart since I was a little kid. That was a gift I'm very thankful for. But the gift of the year -- your crowning glory, 2012 -- is the one you brought in September: a new nephew to love on and squish. Thanks for that.
I feel like you passed by unreported and unexamined in some aspects and I wish I'd had -- made -- taken more time to really look at you while you were here. But you're leaving now and I think it's for the best. You were good, 2012, but (and no hard feelings here) I'm ready to replace you with another.
Leave the door open for 2013, will you? It's soon to be shuffled in straight from the Timemaster.
Farewell,
Danielle
I loved this, as always! I was trying to think of some awesome farewell for my blog, but yours just says it all. :)
ReplyDeleteI hope you find you get along with 2013 better!
(By the way, Seth was born in October :D)
I'm blinking, wondering how the year is gone. Some things are exactly the same: still having MRIs and maybe knee surgery, still enjoying American food, still pondering whether it was a good idea to leave Russia. And yet now I have a whole whirlwind, insane, terrifying semester of grad school done (though I'm still waiting on final grades). And this next year, I'll have a niece to cuddle when they let me out of The School Zone. The road goes ever on and on...
ReplyDeleteI think I agree with you. 2012 was a bit of a nothing year. I intended to write a similar sort of blog post but when I sat down to write it, I could hardly remember a single thing that happened. It was a placeholder of a year, which is a frightening aspect because there should be no such thing as a placeholder year. Hopefully 2013 has a bigger personality (but also kind and gentle).
ReplyDelete2012 was not my favourite year either, but I have a feeling I'll be looking back on it for years to come and realising that it needed to be a tough year cause God had some work to do in my life and I had a LOT of growing up to do ;-) (still going of course)
ReplyDeleteHappy 2013 to you my dear!