Trying to Look on the Bright Side

Not to be a downer at Christmas, but this has been the worst year of my life hands' down in the following categories: most dreadful misery, enduring depression, weeping, self-doubt, self-loathing, rage, heartbreak and utter despair.

And yet amid the darkness several wonderful things have happened, and so it hasn't been all bad. Here they are:

1. I learned to lean on my dearest friends like Fritzi, Mitzi and Kimberley (and family, to a lesser degree. Sometimes chilly, deranged WASPs simply cannot let their guard down, no matter how pressing the circumstances. Yes, I refer to my mother.)

2. I made many fabulous new friends, many of them through this very vehicle, RTK. Tanya has become a real face-to-face friend, I am working on Dale but he is typically playing hard to get, and I'd be sitting in the kitchens of GT or Tearfree every day if they lived where I lived. I also made friends with someone who went through exactly what I went through eight years ago, and she very generously and very kindly enlightened me on some major fronts, and served to remind me that I should always listen to my internal alarm bells.

3. I learned how to grapple with all the crap from my past, settling a lot of things in my mind and heart and easing up on myself.

4. I cried harder, yes, but I have recently started laughing harder. Yesterday I was at my friend Mitzi's after spin class and we started laughing about something and couldn't stop for an hour. Hard, tear-streamed, gasping-for-breath, collapse-on-the-floor laughter that would briefly subside and then return for another 15 minutes. Oh, it was sweet! And not the first time Mitzi and I have laughed that hard recently! Good times!!! The kind of hard laughing you can only experience consistently with girlfriends and gay men.

5. Many kind people keep telling me that I have never looked better in my life in the hair, body, skin, face, overall youthful appearance categories. It may be a total lie, but it certainly makes the medicine go down a bit more smoothly. A LOT more smoothly. Because of this, I am guessing, I have suddenly attracted a sea of suitors; a bullpen, practically. More on that later, but it's weird to me, because I have always singularly been attracted to the mysterious bad boy. Yet suddenly my bullpen is filling up with an array of different types: young, old, hot, elegant, beautiful, rich, intellectuals, jocks, smouldering bohemians, etc. All this despite the fact that I have no interest yet in calling any of them to the mound!

Have a lovely holiday, ladies, Dale and Funnypants. Thanks for making my year slightly less brutal -- it will be forever appreciated.

And now it's time for me to watch a bit of cheery holiday fare: Dexter, a TV series about a serial killer who kills serial killers.