The Dirt Field

At my aunt’s house on Christmas Eve, a cousin that I had not seen since the previous Christmas and with whom I have no personal relationship looked over at me while I was stuffing truffles into my face and snidely asked, “What happened?” I knew she was asking about my marriage, but I couldn’t believe she had the audacity to be so rude, and what was that about people living in glass houses not throwing stones anyway? I stammered out a response that clearly was not to her satisfaction, as she actually asked AGAIN, prompting me to snap something about minding her own business, grab my purse, and flee.

But although rude, her question was fairly valid, not just in terms of my marriage but also in relation to the entire year. I can say with confidence that 2006 sucked. I was charged with reckless driving, I was arrested for trespassing, I got rejected from Georgetown Law, I lost a few good friends, I dropped out of law school, I left my marriage and my apartment, I gave up one of my dogs, I didn’t speak to my parents for over a month, I was diagnosed with depression, and I spent at least eleven weeks being unemployed. Oh, and I had my first urinary tract infection. Sitting there waiting to pee out what felt like an entire cracked windshield but resembled a teaspoon of liquid was by far the worst part of the year.

I don’t know exactly why this past year went so badly. It started out on a good note; I had quite possibly the best New Year’s Eve that I’ve had in over five years. I only got really drunk, passed out in the taxi, managed to (somehow) drop part of my dress in the toilet while peeing, and fell asleep while my husband and best friend stayed up and ate a smorgasboard of disgusting foods from 7 eleven. Relative to previous years, that was a drastic improvement. But sometime shortly thereafter, things took a turn for the worse and have been continually turning ever since. I even managed to take a few good people down with me, and unfortunately missed taking a few others.

But that list of terrible terrible things isn’t as terrible as I’ve made it out to be. My reckless driving charge was reduced to a moderate speeding ticket, my trespassing charge will be dismissed entirely upon completion of a good citizen class, my rejection from Georgetown saved me thousands of dollars and a few organs, the friends that I lost were of the toxic, blood-sucking variety anyway, I needed a break from law school to preserve my sanity, my perfectly sweet and kind husband didn’t deserve the torture of living with someone as unkind as me, I still have my adorable Panqueques Snuggleupagus (Kobe), my parents and I realized that even though I turned out defective, I can at least walk upright and publish embarrassing things on the Internet, I found a medication that makes me a happy person (yes, this IS the ‘after’ version), and I successfully financed my unemployment with my new best friend, Visa. It’s all good.

There was nothing good about the UTI.

Aside from that, however, I can find a silver lining in every cloud from the past year, a realization that helps me move into this upcoming year with a sense of renewed optimism. Things are by no means perfect and there are still some serious scars from the past year on both me and the people who got caught in my tsunami of stupidity. But life goes on and time heals all wounds, or something else poetic that people like me repeat over and over as we contemplate lying down on the Beltway during rush hour.

So in answer to my cousin’s overly prying and personal question, I don’t know. A lot of bad things happened that led to a bunch of other bad things happening and somewhere along the way, I made a lot of mistakes and hurt a couple of people as well. But you weren’t perfect either, so instead of sticking your foot in your mouth all the way up to your thigh again, why don’t we both focus on making 2007 just a little bit better than this past year?