NOTE: Hi! I wrote this post awhile back BEFORE being tested for the virus and found negative! YAY! Before my brush with aging eye problems - sigh! and before being able to meet with my very best friends that I am not blood-related to, Suzanne and Doris - separately! Blessings! And life! The world keeps turning.
The 9th Year
For a lot of us, this has already been an awful, awful year.
My husband and I started with a very pleasant cruise from which we brought home some persistent, nasty, head cold with cough. (COVID-19 had not yet raised its ugly head except in far off China.)
That bug lasted five or six weeks and we had just returned to "normal" when the world stopped. In its tracks. We had to remain isolated for the good of the realm.
THEN, just about the time when we began to cautiously consider venturing outside, a policeman murdered a black man and the whole disgusting event was caught on video. The country went into a period of mourning and righteous rage from which we have not emerged.
Many days, when I wake up, I weigh the pros and cons of living. Five months of waiting for normal have sapped my energy. The lethargy, although understandable and certainly NOT specific to me, still strikes me as overkill, self-indulgent self-pity. I am not judging anyone else here.
And then I realized something. This is a 9th year for me. It's part of my pattern.
When I started to keep a journal, I noticed patterns in my behavior.
Pattern #1: Stay away from me in January. That's the month after the six week Thanksgiving to New Year's frantic Holiday Awesome Superstar Competition that a lot of people sign up for, (including me, alas!). I am NOT NICE in January. I also pick fights in January. (Ooh, the first two lines of a "Gaston" parody...I'm not Nice in January, I pick fights in January. Nope. January has too many syllables.)
Since I noticed the "fights in January" pattern, I have reduced those fights to almost none. Push through, I tell myself.
And NO! I haven't moved my fights to February.
This next pattern actually took decades to reveal.
The 9th year is the worst year. Some people dread turning 30 or 40 or some other age that ends in 0. And that birthday begins a slide of pathetic moaning.
With me it's the year BEFORE I turn a 0 age that is the absolute worst.
I am a soggy, sighing, irritable person in those 0 age approaching years. 39 was the year that opened my eyes. 29 had been bad but I blamed it on recurring miscarriages and my son starting school and other stuff.
Ten years later, I spent so much time moping that my husband actually complained to me about it. He never complains about me, honestly. He suffers in stoic silence.
Since then, I weathered 49 (ouch) and 59 (meh).
Guess what year I am in now. Yep. I will soon be 70.
Want to know something? I am almost happy (I can't BE happy in a 9th year.* Sorry. It's my pattern.) that all the above stuff - COVID-19, racial homicide, political worries, a tanking economy, HUGE unemployment rate, and an attack on the good old Post Office - happened in a 9th year. I was destined to be miserable this year anyway. I am glad that I did not waste a perfectly good year on all this brouhaha.
I send my condolences to all who have had a good year spoiled with a pandemic, a stumbling government, the slap in the face of our systemic racism, a suffering economy, and big unemployment numbers. I feel for you.
At least THIS year, we are all in this together. When you drag through the days looking for relief, everyone understands.
Welcome to the 9th year. Just push through.
*This is actually not true. I can be happy in a 9th year. I just need coffee - or good friends - to get there.
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