I used to think that all I needed in life was a toaster oven and a spoon.

I was wrong.

of all the holidays that happen in a calendar year, New Years was usually tough.

That transition from one year to the next got worse for me as I aged.

There aren’t many superstitions in my head but those which exist tend to revolve around the new year.

gotta have all the trash out the house

gotta have clean sheets

gotta have black eyed peas in my purse and at least a nickel in my pocket

a man has to walk through the door first

etc etc etc

In my early 20s it was the superstition that where and how you spend the new year determines the year ahead of you. I spent most of the time in my 20s trying not to be at the house on Limekiln at midnight. I think two years I worked. That was nice, really.

Working meant I wasn’t looking at the clock and wondering if I would be sentenced to that prison of a house for another year.

I spent the transition from 1999 to 2000 in my apartment.

On my green chaise weeping.

I watched Dick Clark (can’t recall if this was before or after his stroke) on the TV and the happy people in Times Square.

I recalled a plan The Man and I had to be there in that fucking cold. Obviously that plan went to shit like so many of our plans. It would be the year I got pregnant for the last time, but I didn’t know that then.

I just knew that I was alone, in the apartment I picked for us without my other half.

I didn’t think I could forgive him for not being with me. Wrong again.

Back then I knew we weren’t done, but I also didn’t know the road to get back to us. The road I took was drinking, drugs and sex. I was trying not to make it to spring. Thankfully though Clyde took up residence in my uterus and altered the course.

In the years post Clyde New Years wasn’t as awful. Well that first one was tough with a kid waking every two hours to hop on a nipple but the rest were pretty good.

While I’ve never spent a new year with a significant other, I spent 13 with the best kid ever.

This is my second new year without my son in his bed in his house with his mother.

I spent only one new year away from Clyde at midnight, and I hated it and chose to never do it again.

Last year while away from my boy, my kitchen utensils were with their respective families. It wasn’t their fault I felt like I did, but it was a reminder that no matter how much I meant to them this was my anvil alone to carry.

While the three of us had some awesome moments this year, individually we had some darkness also.  Each one of us had some life altering event occur, each one horrific in and of itself.

As 2015 mercifully comes to an end I wonder if the darkness which follows me caught them and wonder if my choosing distance was the right thing.

While I am positive with one of them, I am equally less positive with the other.

I think I am doing what is best for her, even if it’s not what’s best for me.

I know I don’t need a toaster oven, not in the way I used to, but I don’t yet know how to live without a spoon.

 

Aphrodite Brown