and so another year ended, with my friend of 16 years sawing logs beside me as is the norm when watching movies in the basement of my parents house. to think all i've done in one year completely astounds me. last january, i was a few weeks out of college, exhuberant at the thought of being in the real world with my degree, merely to find a few weeks later that only binge drinking would blur away my disappointment. what exactly does one do with a painting degree? i still have not figured this out. furthermore i was still working at coldstone. the thought of it alone sickens me. i drove a uhaul all the way to chicago by myself, flew back and two weeks later i left for italy...and had the best three weeks of my fucking life. summer lilted on the air we gasped for during late night vino dance parties with old ladies from india...who would have thought i'd fall in love with the song mambo #5 when it greeted us upon our return from an accidental 4 hour trip to rome and back. i shall never eat that well again my friends. then i was gone. gone from the land of cyprus trees, gone from the land of prairie dogs and 21 years worth of memories, out on my own living it up by proof of the vomit stain i left on a sidewalk during the summer solstice in lovely seattle. welcome to life. this is it. this is real. this is now. this is bills. this is life miles from all you've ever known. get a job. get a job you love. get a job you hate. work your ass off for those few short hours you spend each week with 3 other people creating a soundtrack for your thoughts. your inner monologues. your asides. and this is it. this is it. is this it? because it shall be fucking fabulous. years have i waited for this year. years. coming home to tears in my mother's eyes to see her only child so grown up. no longer latch keyed but set free by a lucky inheritance from a great aunt she barely knew because out of all her cousins "she's going to do something with her life."

so there i was, clenching the hell out of my magazine, not in effort to squeeze the life out of brandon flowers on the cover mind you (though it may be deserved), but to hold on to something more than myself in the worst turbulence i've ever had on an airplane in my life. for what felt like centuries i repeated "i will not die today. i will not die today" over and over in my head..because i knew it to be true..though others may believe otherwise, 2005 was the best year i've had in ages. i'm back to me. i can breathe again and the clouds parted, the wind stopped. and we were flying.