Good-Bye, 2023

Y’all … I know the “good-bye old year” post is one of the biggest blogging clichés out there. It may be right up there with those posts that are all photos of someone following another person while holding their hand. You know the ones I mean: Those “join me as I adventure in life” posts. By the way, I always click on those posts and actually love them, so don’t take this as a negative. It’s just a thing that “everyone” has done and done and done. Kind of like this “Good-bye 2023” post I am about to do.

And yet …

It needs to be said. Because 2023 was a BITCH, y’all. I feel like this year snarfed me up, chewed a little bit, and then spat me back out onto the ground like a rejected piece of gristly … well … “stuff”. You can probably tell this from the fact that my last post in here was in August. And it is now the end of December. Nope; I’m not dead. This blog is not dead. At least, I don’t think it is. I don’t want it to be. It has just been very, very, very “2023” in my life, which has led to me turning more and more inward.

Let’s recap the highlights of my year. (And these are in no particular order, and, yes, I do know the upcoming is a long and rambling paragraph.)

I got hit with a huge and unexpected tax bill (plus penalties) because my company, apparently, does not do withholding like every other company I have ever worked for. I got “layered” at my job — again — which was supposed to help make my insanely insane workload so much better, but it hasn’t worked out that way. It did make me feel unwanted and unvalued, though; so that was fun. At this point, time has passed, and what’s done is done. I feel I have made peace with it, for whatever that is worth. My work bestie quit suddenly. My older dog got diabetes, leading to thousands of dollars in vet bills. My AC went out, leading to us having to replace both it and the heater (which was from 1992, so it’s basically a miracle it hadn’t cratered). We unexpectedly had to pay tuition for summer school. I got diagnosed with ADHD, which made me feel sad and vindicated at the same time, because so many things from childhood suddenly make sense, and yet, there is no way to turn back time. My younger dog broke a tooth and had to have 5 growths removed, which led to thousands more dollars in vet bills. (After a tense two weeks of waiting, the lab determined all growths were benign, and all his stitches have healed. So … yay!) My older dog, the one who struggled with diabetes all year long, died. She died in October, in a horrible and unexpected way, and I was not able to be with her, and my heart is still broken into a million pieces over it. I can barely think about her without completely losing my shit. Honestly, this is the one that capped the year for me. My husband and I were in the car, driving at 100 miles per hour and dodging traffic on the freeway in an attempt to make it from Michigan back to Illinois before she passed. And we did not make it. It was at that moment, on the phone with my vet, as I sobbed and she told me that she gave my sweet Fae a kiss good-bye and told her how loved she was, that I was really and truly done with 2023. It was at that moment that my heart just gave up and I knew nothing would ever get any any better.

But, of course, 2023 was not done with me. Because my younger dog has taken Fae’s death hard. He now cries all the time and has forgotten he was ever house-broken. And my mom had to have triple bypass surgery, which, of course, was completely unexpected and unplanned. So now, I am unexpectedly in Texas for the foreseeable future to help her and my dad while she recovers. My holiday break from work, which I so desperately needed to recharge from 10-12 hour days, will be spent on caretaker duties instead of getting to catch up on writing or playing video games or watching movies with my daughter before she heads back to school. (And yes, I fully realize how selfish and whiny I sound. It’s just that … It’s been a Very Long Year.) Once I return to work, I will have to figure out how to juggle bath time and bathroom breaks and answering the phone and doctor appointments (all of which must be done to someone else’s schedule with no account for mine) with my work schedule and work calls and deadlines and, yes, the 10-12 hour workdays, which will resume shortly after the start of the New Year.

My brother and sister-in-law came to visit my mom on Christmas Eve. He lives about 1.5 to 2 hours away from my parents and, thus far, I believe this Christmas Eve visit was his only contribution to the surgery and recovery. It’s not totally his fault, as my parents don’t want to “bother” him by asking for help. Even so … y’all can imagine I do not have positive thoughts at this point, so I won’t type them out loud. In the course of conversation, my mom mentioned how surprised she was that I was still wearing the same nail polish I arrived in (this was several days later, and I usually change my manicure every 2-3 days, if I have the mental energy to do it). I replied that I had forgotten to pack nail polish because I had been so stressed and distracted when I gathered up my things to come to Texas from Illinois. And my brother’s reply was, “What do you have to be stressed about?” Friends, I came within a whisper of a breath of losing just … everything. Like, I swallowed down my words and thoughts and feelings so hard it’s a miracle I didn’t have a stroke, sitting right there at the dinner table. I had to excuse myself to go to the back of the house and pace in the guest room until I could calm down.

So … No, I will not be bidding a fond farewell to 2023. It’s more of a “Good-bye, good riddance, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out” sort of thing. I will be happy and relieved to see this year end. I just hope nothing else happens in the next 4 days.

As for 2024: I’ve got my eyes on you. You better shape up fast, or else!