...and a happy new year to you too!

It's 9:00am on New Year's Day and I'm already showered, dressed and fed. I am a little too sunburned for comfort, I am not feeling the slightest trace of a hangover and as I write this, it's raining A LOT.

I didn't think that my new year's day would be like this.


Yesterday was a great day. I spent the day at the beach trying to get a tan. Finally, I discovered the secret to getting equal amounts of sun on both sides of your body: stay in constant movement.

And it only took 26 years of beach going to figure that one out!

Anyway, last night I celebrated the Parisian new year. It's quite possible that I was more excited about that one than I was about my own. For the first time ever I spoke to one of the most interesting characters I have met on through this medium, and despite the fact that to him I was "not even a little bit exotic and almost embarrassingly American", I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation (though it may have been excitement over being a part of someone else's far away celebration) and it occurred to me that he may have more chocolate than previously expected...but there is still lots and lots of foam :)

So yeah, we had a lovely new year's eve dinner by the beach and it was a beautiful starry night. Lilly swears that she saw shooting stars. I wish I had seen them...I didn't eat. As luck would have it, the "special menu" in every single one of the restaurants in the resort only gave you an option of seafood and meat. I am EXTREMELY allergic to one and I won't eat the other. So I got screwed and ended up having the crappiest penne pomodoro I've ever eaten.

But that's alright.

By the time New Year's came and went, I was sober and I was so amazingly sad. Not that the company wasn't great, or that the environment wasn't conducive to fun. It was simply something inside me. I started to think about all the decisions I'll have to make this year, about all the things I don't feel right about doing, about HWMNBN and how my inability to contain the feelings I have for him is literally killing me, about a friend who rather than celebrating last night was mourning the loss of a loved one...

Everyone was cheering and singing the new year's song and I was standing there with nothing but stars over me and water around me and tears down my face.

I thought about everything I went through in 2005 and all the things I left behind and I wanted to find comfort in knowing that at least 2006 is an even numbered year and that things are going to work themselves out, but it was hard.

I know that all my whining probably sounds immensely selfish considering how lucky I am in comparison to most people; however, I can't help the way I feel and I can't help knowing that in the realms of possibilities there is a 50% chance that things will not work out, that in a decision I need to make tomorrow I may be throwing out the possibility of having the only thing I've ever really wanted and that perhaps I've worked so hard at taking "the roads not taken" that maybe I've lost my way completely.

For this year I've decided to make no resolutions. Maybe this isn't the proper way to start the new year, but my only goal is to make it to December 31st and have something to show for it. That rather than have to fake a smile, I can just laugh because all the things that made me cry yesterday are a part of my life that's over and that once again I managed to finish sunny side up.