we all know my year really starts in the fall...

I am "big" on the New Year's thing. I love the idea of starting with a clean slate...as clean as you can get. It's like getting a new set of season tickets and knowing that the past record can't hurt you this year, unless you let it curse you from within. The scores are cleared, everyone is willing to accept apologies and allow you to recreate yourself in front of their eyes. After 2004, I vowed to never live a few months trapped in my bedroom again. I vowed never to let someone get so deep into me that they took pieces of me with them that were never even up for grabs. I vowed to find happiness and shoot it into my veins. I did just that. 2005 was the best year of my life. I never understood the appeal of summer until 2005. Summer was a time for laziness. It was a time with very little progress where I spent more time stressing about how I looked in a bathing suit, compared to my friends, than spending anytime fixing the problems I was fixated on. I was always yearning to get back to fall and back to school where I thrived. College made it worse; the summers were even longer...then came 2005. The beginning of the year was a whirlwind. After 2 weeks off I couldn't wait to get back to school. I was ready to meet a new roommate, see if the guy that was stringing me along was ready to make it official, meet new people, not be the new kid anymore in my first semester. I knew the ropes and had prepared myself for this year of renewal. I never in my wildest dreams knew it was going to take the shape that it did. 2005 was the year of not judging people around me. It was the year of not being scared of taking chances and not worrying about what other people thought. I somehow had manipulated my own mind and let the past go. The haunting days of middle school had finally erased the idea of what I was from my mind. I didn't think anyone was out to get me and looked at every day and every person that I came across as a new opportunity. The world was mine and I was going to make sure I didn't miss a beat.

I can sit here now, with 2009 blooming all around me, and know that NOTHING that is consistent, or inconsistent as I like it, would be in my life if 2005 was erased from history.