the year that was
The year started off fine; there was a trip to Vegas in late January that was a much needed respite from work and New York winter. When we came home to almost two feet of snow, it felt like an omen of sorts, like every bit of joy would be tempered by a burden.
Then February came and my husband got laid off. This was followed quickly with his drinking relapse, which resulted in a prolonged hospital stay. I took time off work to stay with him. The drives back and forth to the hospital as winter waged a battle against us were wearying and lonely; although the hospital is five minutes from my house, driving through sleet and snow to see him seemed like the greatest of burdens and I was wracked with guilt for feeling that way. Once in the hospital, ensconced in tiny room where my husband was hooked up to drips and wires and drugged up, I would feel immediate remorse for thinking of the trips as a burden. I pulled up a chair next to his bed and drifted in and out of sleep with him, doing my best to just be company as he got through detoxing from the alcohol.
March and April were rife with financial stress, and the stress of watching my husband relapse again. May saw another hospital stay, this time in Queens, making the daily drives to sit with him feel once again burdensome and wearying. The doctors’ mantra of “this is going to kill you” didn’t seem to take on the impact with my husband it did with me. I spent my days and nights that summer in a constant state of anxiety — my depression and anxiety disorder deeply triggered by these episodes — worrying if my husband would die, if our marriage would survive this, if I would survive this, if there was any light at the end of the tunnel.
Throughout this all, people died. Celebrities I admired and loved dropped like flies. Donald Trump dominated the news cycle and the looming specter of a Trump presidency grabbed at my anxiety and shook it, like a surreal snowglobe where Xanax fell from the sky and I desperately grabbed at them. Bowie, Prince, Ali, death all around us, screaming from the headlines, blaring from my tv.
When I say 2016 was a terrible year, I mean personally, but I mean otherwise as well. The figure of Death loomed over us constantly, casting a shadow on everything we did. I felt my mortality; I’m 54 years old and that shadow gets darker and more menacing the older you are. When the heroes of your childhood and youth start dropping dead, you take it to heart. When it feels like there’s a new death announced every week or so, it does something to your soul. I looked at each passing as another omen, a foreshadowing: if it can come for these people — people who seemed untouchable at once — it can come for you, too. I kept a careful eye on my husband, who was still drinking despite the doctors’ warning, and spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about age and dying and loss.
2016 was a shitshow, a garbage heap, a dumpster fire, and whatever else the internet is calling it. It started badly and just kept going from there, from that first hospital stay right through to the election of Trump. The deaths are not stopping. The anxiety is not stopping.
My husband has been sober for four months now. He goes to AA meetings nearly every night. He’s happily working again. He’s healthy, mentally and physically. I’m grateful for this port in the storm of 2016, for good things happening, but I’m also ready to let this year go.
Sure, numbers are arbitrary and the clock and calendar moving from midnight December 31, 2016, to January 1, 2017 probably won’t make a difference at all; people will still die, I will still be full of anxiety, Trump will be settling in for four years of who knows what. But damn it will be good to put these past twelve months behind us. It’s a moral victory of sorts; we’re still standing, we made it out alive and intact when so many didn’t. We cried a lot this year, we felt sad, we felt burdened. Mentally, letting 2016 go like a balloon that has outlived its usefulness is a big deal. It’s a prolonged exhale.
For those saying 2016 isn’t a culprit, maybe you’ve escaped this year without private burdens. Maybe you didn’t experience death on a personal level. Maybe the deaths of celebrities don’t phase you. But for so many of us, it seems, this was a year of loss, of sadness, of worry. Don’t tell us how to grieve because of it. Don’t invalidate our feelings. For so many of us, it was the personal along with the public that did us in.
This was a bad year. I’m happy to ring it out Saturday night. I’m looking forward to staying awake until midnight and sending off 2016 with a hearty “fuck you.” 2017 might be 2016’s twin sister; it might not be. Time will tell. But for now, I want to put this year and all of its tribulations behind me. I’d thank you for not trivializing it’s burdens.
May your 2017 be burden free.
