2006 in Review Part I

I've been seeing this all over, so I figured I'd try it. It's a summary of the year, as revealed via the first sentence of the first post in each of the twelve months of 2006.

1. Can you believe it's 2006?
2. I'm not really watching the Super Bowl today.
3. So I just did a word cloud.
4. So this semester ends in a month, more or less.
5. Today should have been awesome, except that Mike completely fucked things up.
6. A week from today I'll be at the airport in Toronto, an hour away from boarding my flight to London Heathrow.
7. Unfortunately this 100th post isn't going to be anything momentous.
8. So, I met a crazy man at the river today.
9. I think I'm getting sick.
10. I know I'm not the busiest person in the world.
11. Why yes, I did have a birthday today.
12. Why am I finding it so impossibly hard to just sit down and write my personal statement for Ph.D. applications?

Well, that wasn't very exciting. Okay, how about this one : I'm going to think of each month and write down the first memory that pops into my head from that particular month, whatever it may be. It has to be the first thing I remember, even if it's not actually the most momentous thing that happened that month. (Wow, can you tell how bored I am right at this exact moment?)

January: Hanging out at Chugging Monkey on 6th Street with Mike.
February: Sobbing on Chelsea's couch during Cohen's birthday party, the day Mike called to tell me that he and Jenny were officially a couple.
March: In Padre at spring break, wading into the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of the night still wearing all of my clothes, freezing, buzzed, and simultaneously more depressed and more hopeful and more confused than I've ever felt in my entire life.
April: I honestly cannot think of a single vivid memory of anything that happened in April. Or rather, I don't want to admit that the only thing I immediately remember from April is taking Cohen for a nighttime walk around the apartment complex while crying/yelling at Mike on the phone.
May: Doing yoga warm ups in summer Shakespeare class, Jen teasingly telling me that she purposely took the spot behind me during the daily sun salutes because she liked to look at my cute butt.
June: Amanda and I happily drinking an entire bottle of mead (the one Alex purchased at the Tower of London) during the pre-party at our B&B in Stratford the night before Amanda's birthday.
July: Crying with Mike as we stood in the parking lot of his apartment complex and rain poured down and thunder crashed very theatrically as I told him I couldn't speak to him ever again [Wish I'd stuck to my guns initially on that one, incidentally, but oh well.]
August: Chelsea and I sharing an entire cheese plate in the middle of the night in our hotel room in Houston.
September: Our first grad student night of the semester, drinking 99 cent strawberry margaritas and already knowing that I was going to have so much fun with everyone.
October: Falling down the stairs the night Night of the Iguana was sold out. Haha.
November: Sitting outside on my cousin Jen's back patio on Thanksgiving, drinking red wine with Richie and my cousins as little Hannah played with her Barbies on the floor beside me.
December: Laughing with Kymberli and all of my relatives and the guys at Rachel's rehearsal dinner.

To be completely honest, I've never been more happy to begin a new year. 2006 was the first year of my life that hasn't been basically an improvement over the year before. My life has always gotten progressively better, or at least held steady from year to year at a pretty good place, but 2006 was definitely not a great year for me. It's unfair to say that it was a bad year, because it definitely wasn't. Many good things happened this year. My time in England was amazing. My trips to Las Vegas in January and December were both great. Careerwise, 2006 has been my most successful year yet. I met some great new people, finally made one very close friend and several other good friends in grad school, felt financially stable, had a lot of fun times with my family. But ultimately, I know 2006 will always be dominated by bad memories of my final split with Mike. Unfortunately that overshadows almost everything else, no matter how hard I try to focus on all the really good parts of the year. I finally feel like I've seen the light at the end of the tunnel as far as all of that is concerned, and nowadays I can say "I'm okay and ready to move on" and seriously mean it. But I have to also honestly admit that I'm damaged now in a way I wasn't prior to this year. I'm not angry about that anymore. I think it needed to happen, I needed to get hurt badly once so that I'm smart enough to hopefully never let it happen again. It's part of growing up, and I think I needed to go through all the pain this year to get on to the different, hopefully better things that are coming up in my life. What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger and all that, and that's definitely the case in this situation. But my acceptance of the events of 2006 as a necessary lesson in my life doesn't exactly mean I enjoyed almost an entire year of learning it.

Really, I think 2006 sucked for almost everyone. Other than the two people I know that got/will get married this year and my parents, who seemed to be having the time of their lives pretty much all year long, and Chelsea, who seems pretty happy now that she's with her Mike, everyone else I know seems to be thinking of the past year as dull at best and traumatic and depressing at worst. My grandfather was in and out of surgeries during the second half of the year and spent most of his time firmly convinced he'd be dying at any moment (that's only sort of a joke). One of my best friends lost her father to cancer this summer and is currently dealing with a relationship that has seemingly been on its last legs for months, the other spent 2006 dealing with her parents' divorce, adjusting to a difficult move, and handling asshole men in general. Another very good friend just found out a tumor she had treated three years ago is back, only this time she's not going to be able to do chemo treatments again because she simultaneously found out the original chemo treatments have permanently damaged her heart. And all of that is just the tip of a pretty crappy iceberg.

When I think back on this year, it's not fun to reminisce like it usually is. I have to think of specific days and moments to have happy memories of 2006. If I think of the year as a whole, I mostly feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach coupled with a thought process that is something along the lines of "Jesus Christ, I'm glad I already got through that and this year is almost over."
I don't want to seem ungrateful. Like I said, I had plenty of good times even if there weren't quite enough to balance out the bad. I'm still alive and healthy and am once again mostly happy, and I'm surrounded by friends and family who love me and will with any luck and grace struggle out of their difficult times as well. Things could be much, much worse. I'll try to keep focusing on the good, and be grateful for all the ups I had this year, and in time I know I'll mostly forget all the downs.

Still, 2007 can't get here fast enough.