Today is the final day of one of the hardest years of my life. I am tired. I feel the full weight of the whole year on top of my chest like a gigantic boulder, trying one last time to suffocate me. I have experienced unexpected failure and small triumphs, great sadness and shiny glimpses of happiness, loss and love, anger and confusion, excitement and contentment. Mostly, I just want to be lit on fire and feel the burn and float up above everything below that is causing my crippling anxiety.

And then I want to sleep for 30 days and just dream in stillness. Quiet. Dark.

I feel hot tears trapped behind my eyeballs as if they were dammed there; a reservoir for a drought-filled day when thirst cannot be quenched. These have been a dry 365 days and my thirst was for joy.

I wish I were a snake, able to tolerate the dryness, but also capable of shedding the exhausted skin I’ve accumulated over the past year. Take it and leave it under the giant rock that suffocates me, in some far away desert where it would break down and return to Earth. Have a new skin to face the world in during the coming year of needed change and promise.

I desperately hope 2018 is the year that figures itself out, the one that takes care of itself the way a 13 year old wants to, but doesn’t have to. That it will be charged and buzzing with little effort. That the heavy shackles cemented to the boulder that was 2017 are dissolved by a much-anticipated, cleansing spring shower.  

2018, be gentle, be sweet to this small fiery snake trying to slither her way out from under the rough rock, just praying for a fresh start.