Unlike my typical year-end posts, this one is depressing. So if you want something uplifting, I suggest you go read someone else. Oh, wait. Most other diaries on this site are also depressing.
Never mind.
I got energetic the last couple of months - and hope it�s not some harbinger of evil. Managed to get every single LP, 45, and cassette tape to mp3 and working now on digitizing all of my photo albums. Which means I've run across dozens of pictures of people I love, or who used to love me.
Benjamin, of course, from 1977 to 2005 � so many with his arms wrapped around me. All three husbands and Mr. Lucky. Again, Mr. Lucky and I in the early years�holiday and New Year�s Eve photos and his arms always wrapped around me with a radiant face looking as if he would never let me go. My high school steady, my first great love�and the second�.all of whom I remember so well�and even a couple with whom I�m still in touch after 25 or 30 years, knowing them and their wives and kids.
I�m sending copies of the family photos ( some back to 1888) to various cousins who have been doing family trees, but even if I knew where to send them, my daughter Morgan was never interested in where she came from - guess it's a thing with the younger generation....it's as if they sprung into the world full-formed, like Athena from Zeus's head. So when I�m gone neither she nor her children will ever know who came before them.
This has been a year of just putting one foot in front of the other, too much in a daze to do anything differently. Bastardo walked away two days short of our third anniversary, my daughter, Morgan, and I are completely estranged and no hope of ever fixing it. She and her family moved to Nice, France and I don�t even know their address. The only good thing is she started a blog and posts pictures of my grandchildren or I would never know how they will grow up. After being with my grandson almost constantly his first three years, it is extra difficult to know that he will never know me - or me him � and to my granddaughter, who I last saw when she was six months old, I will always be unknown. They are five and almost three and seem to be happy. At least they will have a chance to see the world.
And I have a job - despite losing one in August (well, I walked out - first time in my whole life but the boss was so abusive I couldn't take it any more). After three good offers in ten days I decided the hell with working for small companies and took one with a small department in a huge Corporation. Benefits, great boss who doesn't care about age, and a nice department of young people. Back to being an Executive Assistant again but the department is a required internal one that will never shut down, and my boss is high enough in the executive ladder that he is almost required to have an EA � even if he�s fairly independent. And a great guy who called in Thursday and said �Quiet huh? Take tomorrow off as a comp day from me, and Happy New Year.�
In the last few years I�ve suggested everyone make at least one resolution they really mean to keep. I think this year�s resolution will be to learn how to be alone. And it�s about time. I don�t need anyone else in my life asking if they could �stop by for a quick f*k on the way to the gym� (I told him to get lost and don�t ever call me again), or someone I was beginning to be fond of e-mailing that he couldn�t wait to have dinner �tonight and some nsa, meaningless, fantastic sex�. Yeah- I seem to attract them, don�t I � the problem with wanting an active physical side of life.
So it will be something rather new for me. I don�t remember a time when I wasn�t in some kind of relationship, someone in my life who cared about me, someone there to share the everyday. I�m capable of doing for myself, I don�t really NEED someone to do for me.
It�s just a bit lonely, is all, not having anyone to talk to.
Happy New Year to one and all, and may 2012 be anything more than 2011.
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