2010 will be better

Normally i dislike year-end serenades, but 2009 was too loud to be ignored. It will for a long time be remembered as Year of the Crap. While the use of "crap" seems casual here, the word is handpicked (eww). But the point is, i call it crap because some of what 2009 threw at us was horrible, some was atrocious, but everything was survivable. It happened, it was bad, we moved on. A line from some pop song is stuck in my head, it goes "you can grow flowers from where dirt used to be," i'll take that as the theme to this post.

The Dirt:

Pain

Dealing with disease can be excruciating, especially when you're not the one in suffering. This year came in abundance of nursing. The hardest part of it is not the constant attention, but watching someone you love more than anything else in pain and not being able to do a thing. Nothing but time would make it better so you have to wait, and listen and comfort. And damn the year away under your breath.

Trust

We all chirp our lives away comfortably knowing that if we stumble, we have a wall to lean back against. When that wall proves itself see through to the point of non-existence, you fall flat on your ass. When you do fall, if you are me, you get back up. And then you curse the wall. You lose control and you condemn the wall that against a little weight turned into a crumbly corn flake. But it still called itself a wall. You learn not to trust the wall anymore, and not depend on it for leaning. What's a world with one less wall that 2009 took away?

Giving up

This was also the year of changing relationships. Or maybe the year of changing your attitude towards certain relationships. It is the year we threw our hands up in despair, succumbing to if people don't care about the consequences of their own actions, why should we? It is the year we watched disaster, and tried to stop it, couldn't, so then did nothing.

Want

Although begun before, 2009 was the year of solidified that we don't get everything we want. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, sometimes for reasons good enough, but also sometimes for reasons so good you can't help but to agree, and then to promote, and then to believe. But it will always be remembered as the year i stopped wanting what i wanted just because i couldn't have it.

Crisis

You cannot write even one sentence about 2009 without mentioning the escalation of the global financial crises. Let's just say that to the average person typing this, the crisis doesn't mean shit, except when you heard of your friend of got laid off because of the crisis. Or when a business deal you worked so hard to make real gets shut down because of the crisis. Or when after so many such incidents, it really becomes, to the bystander, a crisis; and then none of us are bystanders anymore.

Turbulence

With what started as a virus, the introduction of swine flu early on in the year was the start of a roller coaster than wouldn't end, halting every now and then. Most people just worried about catching the flu. Others (read: myself and my field of work) dreaded the virus not because it was fatal, but because every time it struck, the immediate future of our business became stalled. Ours was the only field that shut down and reopened and shut down and reopened again. Ours was the only field that could not decide on its schedule by itself; who had to wait for orders on whether to work or to wait while someone sneezed their way through a box of Tamiflu. It became frustrating only when you realized that those controlling you were no smarter or more organized than you were. They were in a mess, and made you stop your life and your livelihood while they figured the simplest way to get their ass out of their head.

Death

The most painful event of the wretched 2009. This year, death struck very close to home. So close you could draw the details of pain of loss it leaves behind. So real that you could feel the pain of tears in your head and in your heart. So sudden that you take a moment every moment to register what just happened. So sad that you don't want to write about it anymore. Because writing revives the memory of miserable days and nights that were never even forgotten for one day since.

The Flowers:

If after a year like this, you insist of being happy, you let go of absolutely everything but your optimism, you know 2010 will be better

If after a year like this, all the shitness that took place only proved your theories right, and friends who made fun of you now give you the right of having been right, you know you had your head in the right place and that 2010 will be better.

If after a year like this you have made peace with certain realities: like the inevitability of disease and death, the reliability of depending on yourself, the satisfaction that comes with trusting your instincts, even if you lose in the end, and the acceptance of how people change and change back (or not), you really should know that 2010 will be better.

In 2010 everything will be better.