Tag: highlights

I have faced indescribable depression for my entire life. Everyone says they understand what depression feels like, but I don’t think we do. We all face it, but we face it with different intensities, in different ways, and with different outcomes. Some of us don’t survive it. Some of us appear to survive but really we don’t. I spent my whole life contemplating death. I even spent a month acting it out and only narrowly survived. For years I regretted doing it, not because I lived, but because in the end I didn’t die.

40+ years of that kind of life ruins a person. Try to imagine, then, what it feels like when that person starts to see daylight for the first time. I’d always seen the sun, I knew what it did, I understood colors and seasons and relationships. I’d touched grass and wished on dandelions and swam in oceans. But I never enjoyed it. It made my life worse, experiencing beauty but never believing in it.

Somehow this year, and I don’t know how or why, I found a way to clear some of the film off my eyes. It feels surreal, and borrowed, and wrong. I don’t know the person in the mirror. She can run for four miles without stopping and fit into clothes only meant for other people. She dreams things that actually happen. She doesn’t use travel to escape, she accumulates experiences that inspire more and more and more experiences. They connect her to love she knew existed but had only vaguely realized.

Still, not all the clouds have cleared. I still have no fucking idea how to parent a teenager and the feeling of inadequacy abounds on all sides. Love feels tied to money and letting go, and how do you let go of the love letters your baby used to write you? My mother struggled with this too, and it ended up destroying us. We all have some lesson to learn here, but I feel like the test came too early and I haven’t scored very well. And where did the teacher go, anyway?

After a lifetime of keeping a quite literal death grip on life, it appears that I need to start trusting that the ground beneath my feet lies closer than I thought. I might need to stop trying to claw my way onto the cliff and instead let myself drop down below it. My family, my friends, my colleagues, all keep telling me the cliff belongs to other people too. They also need to find their way. And I need to believe that more than one path can lead to love.

If 2025 represented transformation, I think 2026 offers exploration. Where can these little wings go? I start this year thinking, “Now what?” Whatever paths I try, and wherever they lead, even if I end up right back on the edge of that cliff, now I have 2025 in my pocket. I own its mysteries and possibilities. What a gift. What a privilege.

What an understatement.

Reminiscence starts at the end… and the beginning. 2024 has come to an end and 2025 beckons us forward.

I have always looked at the end of the year more as a circumstance than a true opportunity. Beginning a year on January 1 feels arbitrary when every day marks the passing of a year. But then again, why not begin a new year on January 1? And January 2? And every day after that? If nothing else, when the calendar year ends, we get to eat deviled eggs and wear silly party hats and watch fireworks going off in every direction. Arbitrary or not, this year I say, why not? Let’s go for it.

Minutes after midnight Christina took down our 2024 calendar and put up 2025. I have made one every year since 2005. This year’s cover sets the tone with a quote from Abraham Lincoln: “The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

Flip to the first page and you get this: “A New Year’s resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other.”

I think the sentiments go together. Resolving to create the future we want doesn’t make it happen. We make it happen. Not just on New Year’s Day, but every day. Every day, whether the most memorable moment is the dog sleeping on the couch or going on our first trip without the kids since before they were born. All those moments strung together make a future. We need to make it worth remembering.

So for 2024 we have 366 days of photos, cataloguing a year of our future, and now our past. Nothing very momentous happened this year, but for me, something definitely shifted. I don’t know why. We didn’t have one or two big moments worth remembering this year, but we had lots of little ones that when added together, filled me up in a way I haven’t experienced probably ever in my life.

I gave up the chorus for cheerleading and dance. I got back to the gym and started running again. We didn’t have much money for traveling, so we spent our breaks together redecorating bedrooms and taking a short trip to Charleston. Billy and I saw our first Yankees game in the Bronx in more than 11 years, and we got to share that game with Siggi and Brett. Billy and I came to the absolute brink of disaster this Easter, but with the help of an excellent counselor, found our way back. That change began to bring Robin out of her shell, and while she still hates playing board games with us, she smiles sometimes too. I’ve missed that smile.

We had hard moments too, times where the Universe pushed us to learn from and respect our imperfections. And as hard as those moments were, we hung in it together. For so many years, we lived our lives together but in isolation. This year, we faced our challenges together and came out stronger on the other side. Coming to the brink of divorce forced us all to change the dialogue. Billy had to learn to engage and I had to learn to follow more and lead less. Whatever we did differently this year, it worked.

So now 2025. I don’t expect much to change this year. I hope we continue to grow, lean on, and learn from each other. I want to run a 5k without stopping. I want to win the Harry Potter game. I want to go on more dates. When opportunities come up, I hope we don’t get too comfortable on the couch to jump on them. When opportunities don’t come up, I hope we create them ourselves.

I know we can achieve these things. We have already achieved these things. Maybe we can’t go wherever we want or do everything we want right now, but we can go somewhere and do some things, and for me, I’ll take it.

No. For US, I’ll take it.