The Babes and the Wolf

A Kind of Resolution

Prompt: In lieu of the traditional Motivational Monday prompt, welcome to your first curveball of 2018 *Smirk*. Tell us about a New Years' Resolution you're glad you didn't stick to.


"He's never coming back, you know."

My father quipped in his typically self-important and undercutting way.

"He doesn't have the stomach."

I'm staring out the window, head propped lifelessly against a plain white hospital grade pillow watching that same spot of saccharine pastel paint that's been peeling off the wall for likely years now. The old lady on the other side of the curtain is moaning for more painkillers. The nurse said she'd be back in ten minutes - a half hour ago. But all I can think is how my close friend and former lover just traveled all the way down here from Yonkers after an overnight shift just to watch my blunted body shit itself in front of him.

My father takes a break for the lavatory while the muted fingers of my one still-functioning hand fumble the phone into view. Neither of my supposed closest friends have returned my phone calls. One: not at all. The other: not for days now. (She will later say I'm being too needy.)

My supposed-former-best-friend's father once told me that: "You find out who your real friends are in the hospital and in prison." Funny that she would be the first of enough to teach me that hard lesson.

But not him.

January 1st 2007.

I watched the ball drop from the private room in in-patient physical rehab - compliments of four weeks trapped inside my lifeless body, inside a hospital room, a flurry of claustrophobia - and my recent development of debilitating anxiety attacks. My oldest (and truest) best friend is standing toward the doorway explaining to her asshole boyfriend that, no she would not be leaving me lonely on New Year's eve.

My resolutions that year were pretty simple:

1) Get my feet back under me.
2) Force my fingers to write again if it's the death of me.
3) Get the fuck out of this hospital.
4) Return to UMass (the college I'd attended at the time).
5) And put this shit behind me (like the nightmare I hoped that it was).

Life doesn't always turn out the way you plan it.

Fast forward 11 years...

I never did return to UMass. Several more hospitalizations put me out for the count and my insurance refused to pay for cross-state medical. "That nightmare" lasted the better part of 6 years. Chronic illness is an interesting thing. You can never truly put it behind you. No matter how much better the drugs that keep it at bay. There's always another treatment. Another flare up. Precautionaries. Medication side-effects almost as bad as the disease. Depression. Anxiety. The constant haunting terror that everything you've accomplished with be torn away from you again... The times that it actually is.

Life goes on. You get older. You take shit jobs to keep your shit insurance. It takes six years to get that degree because virtually every other semester sees another paralysis, another stay in the hospital. Another round of chemo, more steroids. You struggle to keep your head above water as your feet fight to tread through the sand, although somewhere deep inside and every time you wake you could swear that you've already drowned.

But a funny thing happens when you stick your life out for the long haul. When you learn to face things as they are and keep going.

Fast forward 11 years.

January 1st, 2018

Near maniacal laughter sounds blithely from a room in the background. Followed by high pitched shrieks in protest - both child screams. Something thuds. Times Square is packed with bodies and their sounds waft over to the writing nook, where my fingers dance lithely across the keyboard. The temperature's hit record shattering lows this year. There's a first for everything, I suppose. My partner yells:

"Its three minutes to midnight..." A pause. "I told you to get off of your brother."

I turn from the screen where my grades from the past semester of grad school smile back at me. I've taken up social work - a field with which I fell in love after 3 different schools (including UMass) where I studied things only marginally related. Then one day, looked around me, sitting in an outpatient waiting room and found my own light. I grab my cane and hurry out to the living room. My partner smiles. I don't think we would have been together if I'd gone back to Massachusetts - as good friends as we'd been. Whether we would have or wouldn't - doesn't matter. My life is pretty beautiful, pluses, negatives, and all. And I can't help but reflect on the particular strength of his stomach.

It turns out that you do learn who your friends are in hospital (and in prison, I suppose, can't attest). You learn that and a whole lot more. You learn that your plans are less important than your will to move forward and carry on. You learn that if you really want to do something, you don't wait for a special day to profess your commitment. You carry on. You work on it every day until you've gotten there, no matter how many times you fall down. But you also learn that ultimately some things aren't cut out to happen and whether that's a good thing or bad is (more frequently than we realize) up to us. You learn about the beginnings and end of things - which always come - even to friendships, the meddle of others and importance of your own self-worth. You learn about this delusion we like to call destiny.

The ball hovers in the air above its nadir. And my phone vibrates. It's my oldest, truest friend wishing me Happy New Year.

Turns out our broadcast is a minute behind.

Who cares?

"Happy New Year's." my close friend, former lover, and life partner of eight years whispers. Our children look on in utter confusion.

"Is it our birthday?" they ask. They're obsessed with this.

Maybe I'll finally teach myself guitar.