2014… A year come and gone. It really feels like this year just started, and now it’s over.
I rang in 2014 with my husband (B), in our tradition of pizza, whiskey, and champagne (honestly, those three things I plan to keep a tradition). We watched Sherlock, and I spent a lot of the evening thinking and writing about everything that had happened in 2013, how different I was than the year before that.
This year, while feeling like it passed in an instant, has brought even greater transitions. In fact, for this entire month, all I have been able to say about it is that it sucked.
In April, I was laid off from the job I had started only 5 months previous. I found a new one within a few weeks, and then was laid off from that at the end of July, starting a two and a half month period of unemployment. That’s just over a quarter of the year spent unemployed.
In July, B and I decided that while we do love each other and make a great team, we aren’t well matched in a romantic relationship. We decided to divorce. He moved out a couple months later. I got a roommate. A couple months after that, I finally started a new job (one that I’m hoping to stay at for several years. I am really over being unemployed).
2014 has been one of the hardest and most painful years of my life, and I will not be sad to say “Good Riddance” at midnight. But thinking back on it today, there has been as much joy as there has been pain. This year brought me people, experiences, revelations, and beautiful moments that it would be a crime to discount in favor of thinking about the bad parts.
At the end of last year, I started seeing someone who has become extremely important to me. The year that I have gotten to spend in a relationship with him has been wonderful. He is passionate, interesting, intelligent, thoughtful, and kind. He is the first polyamorous person I have ever had a relationship with, and exploring the ins and outs of it with him has been a fantastic experience for me. I get to ring in 2015 with him, and I’m thoroughly hoping that I’ll be lucky enough to end it with him, too.
He, in turn, introduced me to a lady who is as wise and kind as she is lovely, and I’m so grateful to be included in her circle of friends. She has been an incredible source of both comfort and advice to me in this very difficult year. Her compassion, understanding, and empathy is what I think everyone should aspire to. The level of productivity she manages to accomplish is absolutely inspiring to me. On the one hand, she puts in sharp relief how much of a slacker I am, but it’s impossible to know someone like that and not feel at least a little motivated to accomplish more with my own life. I’m fairly certain she has superpowers.
B and I still have a great relationship. We talk and see each other often, and despite the pain of ending our marriage, we are both happier this way. However, he remains one of the most generous, caring, intelligent, down to earth people I have ever known. I tend to live with my head in the clouds, and he helps to ground me in a way I desperately need. I’m not sure what I would do without him in my life. It’s been amazing that we have been able to be there for each other during this massive transition, and I feel so lucky that I continue to have him as one of my best friends.
I couldn’t even begin to actually list all of the incredible, interesting, smart, fun people that I have in my life.
The hard times that I went through this year gave me a chance to really find out what an amazing support system I have. My friends and family were absolutely wonderful and I don’t know how I would have made it through everything that happened this year without them.
Concerts
Parties and game nights filled with nerdery and laughter.
Connecting with my family in ways that I never had before
Quiet moments by myself
Lazy days in bed
Walks and picnics in the park
I can’t count the moments of ecstatic joy I experienced this year.
Tonight we say goodbye to 2014, and I’m not sad about that.
But I’m grateful for this year and the lessons it’s taught me. I’m grateful for the joy, the pain, the laughter, the tears. I might not have enjoyed all of it, but I can look back and see that every moment was beautiful.
Tonight we ring in the New Year.
Happy 2015 everyone
Should Old Acquaintance be forgot,
and never thought upon;
The flames of Love extinguished,
and fully past and gone:
Is thy sweet Heart now grown so cold,
that loving Breast of thine;
That thou canst never once reflect
On Old lang syne.
-Robert Burns
Joyful Polyamory 