Seven years ago, I was sitting in the back-seat of a parked car. My family had decided to climb the nearby mountains to catch a view of the fireworks and, more importantly, to watch from a safe distance the crumbling of civilization as we then knew it. A blackout was expected, our bank accounts would disappear. Y2K hysteria was as prevalent as homemade firecrackers. But, I remember wanting to stay up for something else. I needed to be up for the end of the year - to drag it on as long as possible - even as my eyes watered and I yawned at the skyline.
New Year's is rarely about its title. "Glad that's fucking over" and "It was awesome" rule over the "I can't wait for ____." It's a time when we are forced to summarize, to take everything, wrap it in the cloth of memory and stamp it with a resounding: "done."
This 2007, I found myself doing what my non-13-year-old self does best on vacation - taking a break from work, with friends: inebriated. I nod mechanically to the thumping beat that reliably washes out the silences between the scattered exchanges. The awkward "So how's ____?" is as worn out as the embarrassing pile of "home shirts" that you don't have the heart to throw out, but you do have the self-esteem to leave in your childhood closet. We all revert to the quickest contingency plan: smile, say "cheers," and grind away our New Year's resolutions.
The next morning, as I put on the under-sized, chewed collar of a worn Fun Run shirt I wonder if the 13-year-old me had felt as removed back then as now. I found it was hard to carry out the same New Year's process that I had in high school. I hadn't been part of their year, and they hadn't been part of mine. Suddenly thrown together, we were pushed further apart by our own expectation to connect. Neither in 2006 nor 2007, we waited out the countdown.
