Dear 2015,

And so it is that all things must pass and your departure is a highly anticipated one.  As much as I’m ready to see our partnership end, I have to hand it to you that it’s been a very educational experience.  The lessons you taught will be with me on my deathbed.  It was 365 days of life boot camp.  For the majority of the year I felt like I was on some sort of deployment from real life.  But I know it was just everything changing, including me.  As punishing as you were, I can say that we end on a friendly note.  At minimum, I’m grateful.

The Sweat Shop, I mean, Swap Shop was brutal.  I look back now and wonder how I got through it.  Well, I admit that I barely escaped.  That whole experience sucked anything resembling love or a love of life from my soul.  Just this very week I enjoyed music again for the first time this year.  I really heard it again for the first time and it made my heart open a wee bit.  Not all the way, not the way it was in 2013 or 2014, but it was like seeing a familiar face in a sea of strangers.  Maybe you had to make me hate life to get to the point that every breath that comes without pain is pure bliss.  2015 was quite the reveille.

I can’t let myself loosen up all the way just yet.  You wound me tight in a cocoon for mere survival and I can’t bring myself to come out and fly.  I peak out there and see that everything appears safe, but you struck so hard from behind that I’m leary; I can’t trust it all just yet.  I’m hoping 2016 will (finally) let my wings see some sunshine.  

You brought the first bout of writers block I ever experienced.  The pain, confusion, and chaos I have felt prior to you always generated incredible amounts of creativity, if nothing else.  But this year was different.  My hands weren’t free to write because they were to busy digging into whatever I could grasp to keep from going over the edge.  I’m safely on the ground and I can write again.  Not sure what to say or how to put into words what I feel, because I have no idea how I feel.  I just sit here and look around trying to catch my breath from what we’ve been through.

I think it’s a writers PTSD.  So much change and pain so quickly.  I grant you that it all ended up for the better and that things look very beautiful today, but I’m still processing everything you put me through.  The specifics can be too hard to ponder so I focus on the fact that I just managed to come out of it alive and blessed with the greatest friends and the greatest job I could have ever imagined.  What I wanted from life in January and what I want in December are so totally different that I can’t even identify with that girl you started with.  2014 was all about breaking my heart, 2015 showed me that after your heart breaks into pieces those pieces can then be stepped on and moshed into dust.  2015 has shown me that I can rise from the ashes.  

I don’t take deep breaths often enough.  I’m still short on faith that the air will actually be there.  I know you’re trying to show me that I can sing and dance and there is plenty out there for me if I would just trust the process, but I need to take baby steps now.  Let’s face it, I can’t handle another year like this one.  I have no desire to go back and relive it.  But I thank you.  

I thank you for showing me what and how I can survive.  It was the most primal year since my first year on the planet when I learned to walk.  Thank you for showing me that I age well, what I look like when I don’t know when my next meal is, that in my time of greatest darkness I will never stop helping others and rescuing dogs (but seriously, who saved who?), thank you for the people–and they were many–who reached out and offered a kind word or a hug when I needed it and didn’t even know it was what was missing.   Thank you for pulling the rug, the floor, and the earth from under me so I could crawl out of the darkness.