Cheese & Crackers

Snowflakes drift by the windows reminding me that another year is about to pass me by. I'm in a completely different place in my life now than I was a year ago. The last quarter of this year passed in a blur. I stuggle to put things in a chronilogical order from time to time. My attention span is fractured, my mind racing, trying to comphrend everything that's happened over the past year. I have a new job. A new industry. A new relationship status. I've been through an entirely new set of trials and tribulations. I turned 30 this year. I truly left my youth behind. The last half of the year has been chaotic for me. I've been working so many hours, trying to learn everything that I can about this new industry, while trying to work on myself. I've strugged with self-doubt and paranoia while emerging myself in a new workplace. I've started to make new friendships, getting to know my co-workers as well as myself. I've grown up, found a confidence in myself that I didn't think I had. I'm still not fully confident in myself, opting to shy out of certain situations that push me into unfamilair territories. For the better part of my life, I've allowed anxiety and self-doubt to get the better of me; crippling me in almost every sort of way. In growing into my gender identity, I've found a new level of comfortability in my life. And now I'm just sitting here for the next snowdrift to take me away to something new. I wonder what will happen in the new year. Will I continue to experience this new kind of highs and lows, or will we finally find a way to medicate away the symptoms of an illness that has stolen so much from me? I've started a new medication regimine that is helping to slow down the racing throughts that that have stolen much of my focus over the last few weeks. Things are starting to calm down but I'm wondering how much longer will it last? It was a year of change for me, that's for sure. This year I left my 20's behind; something that I never thought I'd do. I've spent the last 10 years racing across the world, tattooing myself, piercing myself, meeting thousands of people. I took foolish chances and calculated risks. I embraced new loves, felt the shattering experinces of loss. I look back over the past 10 years in photographs, letters and memories. I remember that nervous teenager who had a crippling year of turning 20. Now I'm 30. I'm not worried that time is not slowing down. I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to top the adventures that I had in my 20's. Part of me is scared that I will never be able to reach those kind of kinds anymore and that I will waste away, becoming senile, all the while being addicted to the charm of memory. When I sit and think about all the time that's past since I was in my teens, part of me thinks that all of it's been a dream and one of these days I'll wake up spun out on my bedroom floor. So many things have changed me, yet fundamentally I've stayed the same. I don't know if it's a good thing that at my core I'm still that wideeyed, wild, cunning and chaotic teen that I've always been.I suppose a part of me experiences this sense of disllusionment. Maybe I'm stuck in a development stage, unable to move forward. I run back through my memories, the years fall away from me. Things move in slow motion, the point of colour saturation changes from memory to memory. All that's happened to me couldnt have happened. I couldn't have gone to all these places, done all these things. I'm just a single person. Not anything or anyone special. I lay against the fozen Earth and let it all pool out of me. The cold of the ground is a welcomed relief from the fire that's burning inside of me. 3ningful things, experience more things and take more calculated risks. Every year I promise myself that things will be different, that things will change for me. And year after year, I find myself in a similar place. If how I've spend the last half of this year is any indication of how the next year will go, I think that I'm on the right track to make the changes that I want to make. I've been working hard and applying myself in ways that I enjoy. It's nice to see that I'm in a place where my hard work is noticed. This time, this year, things changed for me. I didn't expect it. I finally took a chance. I swallowed my anxiety and finally just let go. I let it consume me and I left a job that was draining me emotionally and physically. I left behind an unhealthy enviornment. I went through trials trying to get a new job...I think I never finished that segment. Will I ever? Who knows. (Now I really want to watch Wallace and Grommit a Grand Day Out. Hee Hee.) There are times when I feel my chronic emptiness and sorrow are perverse; I've achieved so many things, built new relationships and am working towards a sustainable future, yet I feel emptiness crawling through my veins. And in private moments, I find my eyes leaking, brimming with an emotion that threatens to drown me. Despite all that I've done and the chances that I've gone through this year, I feel my short-comings and failures building up around me. I feel my awkwardness in every pause and every silence. I feel my insecurities pulling me away from the things that I want for myself. I don't think that I'm asking too much. All I wish for is a small group of friends who treat me the way that I treat them. I want the same loyalty that I have for them. I want to have a comfortable level of living that affords me a few rewards for all the effort I put in to everything-work, friendships, trying to keep my emotions under control.