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Happy New Year’s Eve

December 31, 2022

In my morning meditation today I thought of all the people who I want to wish a happy New Years to, but who just aren’t in my life anymore. In the past, that wouldn’t stop me, I would use this festive opportunity to reach out via text and hope that maybe we could rekindle a connection. (Which, looking back, I don’t think ever actually happened.) But after my lived experience the past year and a bit, I just don’t have it in me to do that.

I felt saddened by my lost connections with a lot of people. Most notably, my two best friends: the one from childhood and the other from adolescence. They weren’t mutual separations. That’s got to be traumatizing I’m sure, most notably because it happened more than once, which has got to have some subliminal cost to trust. My stream of consciousness then moved to the phenomenon of trauma, and what that really means.

Growing up in an alcoholic home, I am well acquainted with trauma. I have very few memories of my past as a result of it. As I get older and healthier, I see how things I thought were normal really aren’t. Having only a handful of memories from childhood is one of those things. As I talked myself out of reaching out to old friends and acquaintances, and began to see that I was crossing the line to stinking-thinking, I realized that my melancholy doesn’t mean that I have to give into isolation. I instead reached out to new friends.

Because I am doing so well these days, it’s easy for me to forget where I come from. But that pain that is still there, it’s just less intense. Because my trauma is so deep in my psyche, it can be my guiding star if I don’t remember that I had to learn what normal is, and therefore, it’s really not intuitive for me. I can easily slip into old patterns that are destructive.

So as I write this post, I go back and forth to replies that come in from the new people in my life who I want to foster relationship with, and it’s mutual. And it feels amazing.

Happy New Years dear readers. Whoever and where ever you are, know that you are deeply cared for. By God, and by me. Thank you for caring about this website, which is my art and is therefore an extension of myself. As Father Nick says at the end of every mass, “Remember! You are loved, immensely.”

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