because it’s the first day of 2012 and everything, and because i’m spending my day in my bed in my blankets with the window open and with a cup of bottomless coffee and gunther for company, i thought i’d take a look back at some of my favourite things from last year. because i fucking need to be reminded that good things happened last year.
it’s cut, because it’s long, and really only for me.
i waited for 2011 my entire life. year of jesslyn. i called it. like a little moron. a cute moron. but a moron all the same. everything was going to go my way. i had everything i could ever need or want. and then, because right whenever something is actually going really well i feel the need to cast it aside, i decided that i didn’t really need or want everything i needed and wanted and etc and etc. so i broke up with my boyf and he moved away and i moved in with roommates and quit my job and blah blah blah.
so whatever. it wasn’t my year after all. as an aside i’d also just like to mention that i fucking called it. straight up. but whatever, no big deal. i guess i’m just someone who jinxes things? i don’t care. i’m someone who does a lot of terrible things and i like being that way. as it turns out, the best part of last year is that i learned that i am amazing. i am young, and smart, and talented, and beautiful, and funny, and kind, and loving, and generous, and i have absolutely everything going for me. i know that i complain a lot, and whine. i get that. i know i shouldn’t be bitching or whining. i’m a realist. i get that. i have a lot of flaws and that’s a big one. i know that i can be really harsh and stuff. i know that i am brutally honest with people, and that even when the honest words are kind words, the brutality of them is still there. i know that a lot of people don’t like me. i have said a lot of things to people that made them stop speaking to me altogether. i get that. i don’t care. i miss them, but i would not trade who i am to have them back in my life.
i have a great life. and despite all my weird fucked up damage and my piles upon piles of super annoying flaws, i’m still awesome. and maybe last year truly was great. i did a lot of fantastic fucking things. some of the best nights of my life happened last year. some of the best writing i’ve ever come up with happened (and some of the worst, which is also fantastic). maybe i just had to spend the whole damn year bitching and complaining so that i could come to this conclusion. i don’t know or care. but i’m really, really stoked on what i’m going to do with all my confidence and optimism in 2012. and let’s be real, i’ll probably find a way by the end of this month to lose that too, but whatever! hakuna matata! scrapbook!
january
old months let you drift,
on frosted glass your empty
hand, a clenched
fist, a
surprise
february
“when the bars closed, we’d just smoke up and go bowling all night. we’d just bowl until someone bowled 300. stoned out of our minds.”
“i ordered a tea.”
“by accident?”
“she’s not the brightest crayon in the toolbox.”
“don’t you mean in the cookie?”
we sang happy birthday in a bowling alley.
“haha, sup.”
“here’s my number.”
“pft here’s my vagina.”
“that’s how i say hello.”
march
something wholly magical happened tonight.
good dreams.
april
video scrapbooks and optimism.
i say probably when i
really mean something
i’m quiet, and think
about the
frame around the window
i think i fell softly,
which is unusual, and i am quiet,
trying to come out of shock
may
in a frame on my desk
you’re drinking
from a forty ounce
bottle of unrealistically bad
beer, you are the only one
(looking into the camera)
and the glass is heavy
her torn tradition built,
rebuilt itself two hours south
of tag-lined borders,
circling shores of lakes
in an alley in toronto in
the sprawling dusk
defense was
in each other only, a ship
derailed continues
sailing on
PMA.
june
i will always take those things. i will always want to learn more about myself through the eyes of someone else, and in the process i will always leave someone behind (because i’ve taken all i can).
“i have a list on my hand right now and your name is at the top of it.”
overheard in starbucks, a woman leaving a voicemail:
“are we still meeting? because i think i’m at the wrong tim horton’s.”
july
months ago i trained myself to give up on the idea that skipping certain songs is healthier for me. it isn’t. i let everything play now, even if it made me nauseous at a train station in a city on my way to him. i’m far too sentimental. these days i’m even sentimental about being sentimental. it would have been wonderful to kiss him goodbye before i left. we tried to meet up but it never happened, and i didn’t mind. kissing him is fucking fabulous but i don’t need it. goodbye is not my favourite thing… i’d rather leave it as it is. he never makes me want to skip a song.
august
i don’t wear mascara anymore. i wear heavy spring jackets in the humidity and put off straightening my hair. i’m not worried about scars on my legs. i kick off my shoes. it doesn’t really matter what i’m wearing. i can still dance sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, i let friendly german shepherds kiss my face, i am growing.
the pub was our glasses,
half-empty or less
the only shadows
those of men who drank
wholly, enormously, while
you were a blink
each kiss comes
more deeply, to vanish, hold
tighter, as
close as each spill never
swallowed
they had their chance
to grow old, expire
the nice thing about the war
memorial is that
there are no voices, you
can’t hear a word
when he would touch me
i’d explode, i won’t
forget that, or his eyes
but i’m needy
and dependent and i don’t
deserve that magical kind of sex anyway
as it turns out i was
actually, really, in love
with someone else
september
staying in bed ALL DAY.
waking up and everything is different.
october
reasons i’m not giving up.
1. i got rid of the hat.
2. i have a date this week.
3. i have only a few friends, and i treat most of them like shit, but they are still my friends. they are always there when it’s really needed.
4. i’m working.
5. it’s fall!
6. i’m going to stop drinking (as much).
7. i have the best pros & cons list ever.
8. the terrible day i was dreading finally came and it wasn’t so bad after all.
9. i love my room & bed.
10. at least i have gunther.
november
for the first time in too long i feel something unselfish.
december
not being scared of anything.
:)
this really was a fab fab year.
