Near the end,
The year is ending, today. If it wasn't It would be just another day. But it isn't you say? The sun that shines in my mirror today appears no different than it appeared yesterday. Probably won't look any different tomorrow. The sky, the stillness of the morning fog, the noise of the distant traffic, the birds chirping, the children playing outside, the faces of people around me or their schedules, or mine, or hers, or his. The farthest stars, the nearest trees, the deepest secrets, the biggest fears. Me. You. None of that will change.
Yet something will.
A label shall be peeled off yet again today to be replaced by another one. The ones that we made ages ago to keep stock of our lives for ages to come. To remember the ages long forgotten. Years are for historians but memories are personal. I fell in love in the spring of 2009. But it could've been 2008 or 2010 or 12.. it was a long time ago and it was an amazing feeling and that's what I remember it by. Not by the year. Just like I don't remember the exact years my grandfather used to walk me to the toy store across town or the years my grandmother spun tales of fantasy and religion. In the retrospect the labels won't matter. It would probably be good days and bad days, good memories and bad ones.
So why then should a change in label still bother me? Or maybe some of you?
I can't really put it. For me, one is probably clarity or the lack of. Now that I'm here in the final day of this year with knowledge of how my year had been so far and with the knowledge of no impending doom for the remainder of it's final few hours remaining I feel free and at ease. And maybe I'd miss that feeling with the change of year. It may just be a label, yet labels do matter in the world we live. Our lives are broadly defined by these presets and parameters. I probably don't like that either. And finally I guess I don't like endings and partings. Not that I want to (I'd rather relive 2002-6 over and over), but I won't be seeing the year 2018 again in this life. There's a ring of finally to it, like death. Once it's over, it really is over.
Every year I get ushered into the next year without my consent really. Into the unknown. By the time I get used to the unknown it's already the new year's eve. So I'll stay here, as I always do, in the fading sunlight of this year's final few breaths and think of what's been done and where I stand.
I do intend to welcome the birth of our new year.. but I need to first part with an old friend till it breaths it's last.
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