On December 31st, 2010 sometime before midnight, a twenty-something drunk girl in a tutu ate an unmentionable pill which ended up defining her NYE. That definition will go down in history as the worst night of her life.
Okay, maybe it wasn't the worst. But seriously. It's in my top 5. And that's saying something.
As my body swapped between puking and crying, and my heart unwillingly raced a track through out my arms and legs that I didn't even knew existed, I wondered what this meant for my relationship with 2011. Though I try not to be a superstitious person (and trust me, with a Mother like mine, that is hard!), I still couldn't help but think of that old belief that one's NYE night is a sneak preview into the rest of his or her year. But the more I tried to deny it, the more I puked, the more I cried, and the more the bad luck that would be 2011 seemed harder and harder to ignore.
This theory proved true within the first breathes of good old '11. Within a matter of weeks, the balance i had fine-tuned in order to manage my ridiculous schedule was shaken and stirred by a variety of unfortunate components. The first problems at work started sprouting their heads, the 17 units of school I was taking were even more stressful than I had considered and the responsibilities of The Emerald Hill which had always been the gem I looked forward to in my week began to burden me. The result from all this run around? A flu from hell, turned sinus infection, turned flu from hell: the sequel.
As I missed days of school and work for heaves over the toilet and ons and offs of shivers and sweats, i continuously thought back on my new year's eve night of foolishness with great hatred. I fell behind in school from missing important lectures, forced my boss to stay home because I couldn't care for her children without infecting them and became close pals with "Desperate Housewives", since my real friends were gallivanting around town, flu-free, all the while cursing everything about New Year's Eve. I pretty much stayed inside for 3 weeks...and into the 2nd I began to feel very depressed.
But a few days ago, during the throws of flu 2, I started to think differently. I thought about the fact that before 2011 I didn't even have health insurance. I thought about the abundance of calls and visits I'd made to Kaiser in the last few weeks, and how much more difficult it would have been to be ill this way without health care. I thought about the fact that my teachers were being so unbelievably accommodating, and that even though it was a struggle to catch up, their surprising support made it possible to do so at all. And then I thought of 2010.
The year I lost my car and license , went through significant heartbreak with family and the boyfriend, spent a heart-wrenching 7 months without communicating with my Mom, couch surfed for a few months and got so embarrassingly drunk in the middle of the day that the phrase "rosa-at-chris's-BBQ-drunk" was created to describe being...well...retardedly smashed. Yes, it was a pretty crazy year. But not once did I consider it a bad one. And do you know why? Because the New Year's Eve that belonged to it was the best of my life. So every time I came to a new predicament in 2010, I thought, "well Rosa, what are you going to do about this?" instead of, "See Rosa, this is what you get for having such a shitty New Year." I never considered the possibility that those events were bad luck events, because in my mind, 2010 was going to be a fantastic year, just as it's New Year's Eve was.
And 2010 was a great year, guys. It was honestly fantastic.
So you know what I think the thing about luck is? I think we decide whether or not it's good or bad. I think we can look at a situation and make the choice to brood about it or celebrate it. We decide to fix it or curse it. Maybe sometimes it's easier to chalk it up to bad luck or a shitty New Year, but this revelation is going to make it impossible for me to ever be able to do that again. And you know what's funny? I started finally getting better after my remarkable epiphany.
I never appropriately raised a glass to you, New Year, seeing as my face was buried in tears or the toilet. So here's to 2011. May we all continue to make our own luck.
