The missing mouthpiece was the only thing any of us cared about. Mother’s meat pies had ceased their steaming, and their steaming had been replaced by curdling. Hours had passed, and the dinner table still remained unoccupied. It was the Holiday season, the precarious dead zone between Christmas and New Years, when you keep the decorations up and pretend you’re still in a hopeful frame of mind, but you’re really not. How many resolutions will I reside myself to this year? Quite a few, I would presume. I have always been a proponent of being your own man, and shirking all formal plans of action, aka resolutions. If you are bound to set a written goal that is in essence a proposition to yourself, I feel that it is falsely conceived and therefore will be lackadaisically executed. If you had to wait until tradition told you to make it a priority, how much of a priority was it? But now that I have shot past my childhood, raced by my teenage years, slept through my early 20’s, and been catapulted into my mid and now precariously "late" 20’s, I find myself displeased with my accomplishments and in desperate need for the dreaded "resolution."
A Resolution Revolution of sorts. I recall making a long list at age 11 or so, but the extent of seriousness was "get an ‘A’ in Math." Ah, math. If only relationships and emotions and sickness had an algebraic answer, then I could scribble them on my fancy little list and be content with what will/should/might be transpiring.
1. Get an "A" in Math.
2. No deaths in the family.
3. Enjoy a captivating relationship of mutual affection and bewildering success, where neither partner is confused or upset or with doubt at any juncture.
My Outlook cannot be accessed; the admin tool is blocked from my usage, it’s Christmas, and I’m writing to you. I’m not in the "desperation call" mode just yet, but if I had one less Guinness in me, I’d be there. There were Manhattans served earlier, Cosmopolitans too. I myself will be a Cosmopolitan Manhattan dweller come next time this week. The pop-up blocker has been turned off on this computer, and I continue to be prompted with, "see how long it would take you to make $1M!" $1M does not concern me. Nor does it concern me that when my father was my age he had already lost his mother, been drafted and flown and forced to fight in North Korea, been married for three years and watched as his first son was born. A son that giggled and flashed his dimples at every opportunity, "he was always such a happy child" they said. I had all of the dinosaurs memorized by age three, and recited them alphabetically to the doctor before he put me under to insert tubes in my ears in an attempt to curb the infections.
Do you believe you do more of the "soul searching" variety type of thinking when you are single or when you are in a formal relationship? When you are with someone, you tend to get into a lot of the "are they right for me," "are we right together," "is this the right time" kind of thinking. But for me, it is not nearly as acute as when I am alone. While involved you can only go so long wondering before you find yourself face to face with that person, at which time it becomes easier or harder to make a decision. Whichever route you decide, you are together then apart, together then apart. The constraints of work and family and life and obligation render it impossible to always be with that person, yet the majority of the time it is impossible that you will always be apart. Your sense of self is therefore muted, because if you are serious, during your time together you are focusing on the other person, at least to a large extent, and during your time apart, you focus on thinking of that person, hopefully in a pleasant way. While at work, I think of work, but when I am away from work and my mind strays from the office, I am thrusted into a meandering malaise of dissatisfaction. I laughed less this year than any other year, as did my peers, so it seems. My dimples were seen by fewer, and as trends go, they will be seen by fewer with each passing year. My lifelong mate, if I have one, will flash her smile less as well, and if I meet someone my age, she will be less uplifting than she was five years ago. If I become reunited with a past love, will she be more in tune and self-aware and a bigger smiler than she was when we met? More so even than in high school or junior high? So much to overcome, yet it would seem there is so little to hold us back. Then why are we always so afraid? What would it take for us to be gleeful and free all of the time, ok, most of the time. I will find the internal soma to make us all dimple flashing on Christmas day, on New Years eve, on and on and on and on on. And on off. Yep, even on off. Sorry to take you away from your resolution-making. Good luck in Math this year, I heard that Algebra 2 can be a real bugger.
Bryan May
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