One for yes, two for no.

This year brought me restlessness. 


I keep writing that over and over. Everyone on twitter keeps doing #2011inthreewords, but I can do #2011inoneword: restlessness. 


I have a journal post from January 1, 2011, written sometime in the early, early morning, and I feel like I haven't slept since. I've been too excited and too hungry and too alive and too... human for sleeping. 


I'll sleep when I'm dead, I suppose. 


I'm just dying here (metaphorically) (well, literally, I guess, too: one year closer to death now). All I did was blink. I blinked -- like this *1/1,000,000,00 of a second* -- and then there was only one day left, and I don't think one single thing happened the way I was expecting it to. 


This year brought me restlessness. This year brought me hair like coffee. This year brought me driving. This year brought me strangers. This year brought me walls, of books and of stones and of blankets. This year brought me House of Leaves and The Virgin Suicides and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This year brought me Billy Prilgrim and his un-stuck-ed-ness in time. This year brought me fat, full composition notebooks, hundreds upon hundreds of pages filled with my shoddy cursive in just a matter of months. This year brought me what I wanted for Christmas. 


And this year brought me August, which was important, because August gave me everything else: August celebrated my life, and August reminded me of how to read, and August taught me how to kiss. August handed me four people who taught me how to LOVE, absolutely and completely. August picked me up by my collar, tossed me back into the dust of high school, and looked me in the eye and said, "You can't win," but August must've forgotten that it made me competitive, because that statement of "You can't win" just forced me to look August smack in the eyes and say, "Watch me." August left me hungry. August confused me. August bought me book shirts. August stuck its tongue in my mouth. 


And sometimes I feel like I've forgotten what life was like before August, but I do remember. I remember the Titanic, and I remember the eighteenth birthday bash, and I remember the humiliation. I remember life ending with graduation gowns. I remember yearbook day. It's all there, happening in mid-blink, and I can't quite grasp onto it. There are things that I have repressed and things I would do over (but never really, of course) and there are capsules of angry, but I like them -- all of them, the wannabe repressed memories and the wannabe-but-not-really-of-course do-overs and the angries. 


I unloaded my pockets of the things 2011 left me while I was blinking, and what I found was as follows: one (1) paper crane, one (1) sandwich with hummus, three (3) pairs of magic pants, two (2) bins of cat cookies, two (2) batches of magic cookies, four (4) angsty teen novels written about us, seven (7) tubes of half-gone, misplaced chapstick, a lot (a lot) of fallen eyelashes, one (1) basket of fury, three (3) tuberwares of euphoria, six (6) jars of exhaustion, and one billion (1,000,000,000) handfuls of contentment. 


Oh, and you. I've kept you in my pocket, too, because I love you. Remember when we linked pinkies and wished at 11:11 pm on 11/11/11? Remember how when I didn't know what to write in the margin of your yearbook? Remember what you wrote in mine? Remember the time we brought magic cookies (but you didn't eat them)? Remember when we celebrated your birthday? Remember Riceday? Remember the way I told you everything about my high school and you told me everything about yours so that it was like we were never apart? I remember, even though I was busy blinking during it. 


I think that in 2012 I will learn to golf and learn to play tennis and also chess and how to write shorthand. At first I said, "In 2012 I will not be afraid of anything," but I realized that was sort of stupid, because there are things (e.g. what I'm afraid of) that I have no control over. What I'm really going to do is not let fear hold me back. From anything. (READ: ANYTHING AT ALL except maybe spiders.) (Actually, spiders might seriously be a good place to start with this one.) 


So when you're walking away, from now on, I'm going to call your name, and when you turn around, I promise that I'm going to say what I really want to, even though it's scary. 


I think that in 2012 I'm going to try to blink a little more quickly so that I miss less.


So, welcome 2012. Please bring great art.


HAPPY NEW YEAR, SNITCHES.
All my love,
Addy