How excited am I for 2020 to finally get here? I feel like I haven’t been this excited for a new year since 1999, just because I liked saying that we were going to party like it’s 1999.
Twenty years on, life seems to have taken all of these turns and shifts and bends in the road to deposit me precisely back at who I was at 21. Insatiably curious, desperate to do all the things, and feeling like all of life had finally turned out like I wanted it to. College was a long, hard road of lonely for me-in all of my years at Muskingum, I had exactly one good friend, and mostly got along much better with my professors than my classmates-but by 1999, I didn’t care. I was “becoming who I was to be” (a quote that I stole from my favorite teacher of all time, Mr. Frank) and all I did was read and write and watch a lot of movies.
The past four years have circled me back to that same girl.
4 years ago, staring down the very last few weeks of my marriage before my divorce was final, I had a definite idea of what I wanted to happen- I wanted to let go of the past, to move forward in some healthy way, and to eventually meet the actual , true love of my life that surely God intended me to meet. To my mind, the only way that any of the pain of my marriage ending would be worth it in the end would be for me to realize that Nick had somehow been all wrong for me all along. The truth, I told myself, would feel so much more amazing for having lived so long with what turned out to be a lie.
Of course, that hasn’t been how any of this has worked out.
The only person that I’ve gotten to know better in the past 4 years is that girl that I left behind at 21. When Nick came along, I (quite naturally, I think) sort of shoved that girl aside. My life became about creating this family that I had always, always wanted. My life from 21 to 36 was consumed by Nick and the girls and being the mother and wife that I felt that they needed. When people talk about music or movies or anything from 2000 until 2015, I have little recollection of it. My life was made up of tummy time and Sesame Street, breastfeeding and precious little sleep.
I’m grateful every single day that I met Nick Johnson and I mean that with every beat of my heart.
But I’m also grateful every single day that I have found that girl that I let go of at 21. I’m grateful to have all of this time to read and write and watch all of the movies. To be my own best company. To just be alone, and have it be enough.
My word for 2020 is release.
We’ll see how it goes.
"It's gotta be a strange twist of fate
Telling me that heaven can wait
Oh, I'm gonna get it right this time
Life doesn't mean a thing
Without the love you bring
Love is what we've found
The second time around."
-Olivia Newton-John
