Reaching Ahead In Desperation

It was folly to try to salvage the final stretch of 2017. By the end of November, I had scrapped my hopes altogether. I began to look to 2018. I reorganized my goals and priorities, and it was a somber thing to read over my list from the previous January. I knew 2018 was not going to be a cakewalk, that I would need a head start on it. I also decided, rather than wait until New Year's Eve, to go ahead and read over the 2017 Journal I kept. For an unflinching, unbiased, unfiltered, honest assessment.

It was an awful year. I can count on one hand the number of good days I had in 2017. And I am an optimist. What a terrible thing to realize. I had already used the post title "A Bad Year Ends" on 2007, so I can't even use that. What's even more mind-blowing is that 2007 is one of the years I look back on most fondly. 2017, however... I don't even need to recap it. You know.

Juliet is anticipating major surgery in February, so recovery will be time-consuming and difficult. This also means that any glimmer of hope I have for 2018 being the year I made a comeback doesn't matter until probably April at the earliest. Realistically, 2018 is going to be very rocky for the first four months, at least. That is also a terrible thing to realize.

I have been sick every day since Halloween. That is a lengthy streak of poor health. It is unprecedented. I can scarcely even remember what it felt like to be normal, healthy, energetic, capable. It's more than just an unfortunate overlapping of consecutive viruses. It is like something sinister is behind it. I wish I could tell you just how... weary I feel. I have never been sick for two months straight.

Every single contractor we've hired to help with the house has let me down. Some, in spectacular fashion. The foundation guy, the second person to "fix" our foundation by messing it up (or is the the third? Things are so absurdly, consistently bad that I can't even keep up) ghosted us in July. We had to threaten legal action just to get him to return a damn phone call. The drywall guys quit not even halfway through the job. The new plumber we hired not only failed to fix an entry-level project but made it worse. So, as I type this, for a week now we've had no running water at the house, and for even longer, we're surrounded by unfinished walls, which means our floor tiles that we bought almost three years ago still haven't been put in. We bought the house a month before Juliet was diagnosed with breast cancer, thinking we would have the time, energy, and money to fix it up within a year. And we might have been able to. But here we are, and literally everyone we've turned to for help has failed us in ways that defy explanation or belief. Here we are, and we are still living in a glorified treehouse with no real floors.

Things look even less hopeful when the powers that be are intent on making it worse for us. Our healthcare options are, as Juliet put it, "dramatically worse than they were last year." And then they decided to pull a Reverse Robin Hood with the new tax proposal. As if things haven't been hard enough for us, the Republican Party and Donald the Pussy-grabber-in-chief have taken our peace of mind, and are promising to raise our taxes and fuck over our healthcare. And then, somehow, they decided to end net neutrality, which will absolutely make things harder for the little guy, artists and entrepreneurs, to grow their businesses. The party of family values my ass. The party of fiscal responsibility my ass. The party to champion small businesses my ass. They sold their scruples and forfeited the supposed moral high ground when they equivocated all the sins of Trump and now, most recently, Roy Moore. I am starting to think one cannot be a moral person and be a Republican at the same time. They are just so awful and hypocritical that it is stunning. And they are making my life measurably worse. Yes. I will say that again: Objectively, my life has gotten worse as a result of Republican policies. Take that to the fucking bank. Trump, that son of a bitch, has absolutely no redeeming traits--an absolute zero like that alone is unheard of, but it's true. He needs to be impeached for so many reasons, but these once self-ascribed "Never Trump" Republicans don't have the balls to break ranks and do the right thing. The entire party is morally necrotic. And Trump views it as one big reality TV show--more important to keep people tuning in than to give them peace of mind, even going so far as to flirt with nuclear war extinction. Meanwhile, your average Evangelical is so entrenched in self-righteous partisanship that they would vote for Satan himself if he ran as a a Republican, and then they'd brag about what a good Christian leader he was. Fuck Trump, and fuck the Republican party. It needs to shrivel up and die and be replaced by something better. Before they ruin not just my life but everyone else's.

I'm not holding my tongue anymore, not pulling my punches. I have been pushed too far, and I am all out of fucks to give.

That rant was the B section of this sonata.

My thoughts this week are on 2018 and the personal need for clinging to whatever inspiration I can, to reach for that horizon of better days. As for my source of solace or inspiration, or my myriad goals, I will go into those at another time. Probably for New Year's. This blog post is my official, final "fuck you" to 2017 as an entity.

I think I will make my daily mantra, my motto for 2018, "Make every day count." I feel so behind, and so bereft, that I need to make progress crawling out of this abyss at least a little bit each day. There is no time for delay. There is no time for waiting. There is no time for regression, for setbacks.

Two different people today have said, "It gets worse," referring to two different aspects of life. Neither one was what I particularly needed to hear today. If everything only gets worse, then I need to make every day count for something. I need progress. I need hope. I need victory. I need... I need time I don't have. So I have to at least make one little bit of advancement every day of 2018, even if it's just a symbolic victory, so long as it is a daily occurrence. I can't have another awful year.

January First is just a number, though. A year is just a tab on an abacus in your mind. Each day is just another day. 2018 begins in my heart whenever I am ready. It's funny how I used to ridicule New Year's Eve for those reasons, but over the past few years it has become one of my favorite holidays for its inspirational value alone, let alone the social promises it holds.

A clean slate is a beautiful thing to behold. A blank canvas is in itself a majestic work of art.

Make every day count. We don't have time not to.