Bird on Fire

I suck at setting goals and so don’t even try to make New Year’s resolutions. But on the eve of 2015 my mentor asked me what my word for the coming year would be. Choosing a word, a single-pointed intention for the year, was something she’d done for many a new year. Since I make a point to do as she does, I decided to give it a go.

My word for 2014 would have been deconstruction. There was a canceled wedding, an eviction, a parental estrangement. By December 2014, I was running on adrenaline, riding the high that comes from so much radical change in such a short period of time. I felt invincible, empowered, and certain that all things good were coming my way—love, success, rampant happiness.

So after much deliberation, the word I chose for 2015 was flight.

I imagined myself soaring, all regal and badass, like an eagle or a dragon.

I was gonna fly. It was going to be the best year ever.

The first few days of 2015 obliged my delusions of grandeur. Two days deep I had a rom-com-perfect meet cute over some gluten free chocolate birthday cake. Homeboy was gorgeous and charming and a whirlwind romance ensued. “Can you believe this?!” I’d say to my friends. “This really is going to be my year!”

“You earned it!” they’d all say. Damn straight, I did.

By mid-February, I had a broken heart which, adding insult to injury, opened the flood gates of grief and anger I’d been suppressing for months. I spent the rest of the year trying to put myself back together with mid-day baths, long walks in the woods, and a fair amount of bourbon. And the hits they kept on coming. Family court. A sick kid. Navigating the new dynamics of my dysfunctional family from my self-imposed exile. I quit my day job to pursue writing full-time, which felt awesome for about two weeks and then left me in a state of near-constant anxiety. On my 33rd birthday I found not one but three gray hairs (which are still slowly multiplying).

Somewhere, very early in that mix, I forgot all about flight. I was so sad, so often, that the year felt compeletly subterranean. I was not an eagle or a fierce dragon. I was a creature from Middle Earth with bad hair and an aging body, not fit for public consumption.

And suddenly it’s the eve of 2016 and I’m thinking about what I want the new year to bring. I couldn’t even remember what word I’d chosen for 2015, only that, despite much-needed lessons learned, the year had not gone at all as planned and I was ready for a bigger, bolder, spicier showing.

On New Year’s Day, I sat on a tacky Polynesian wicker sofa with my friend, and announced that this year my word is fire.

“Why?” she asked.

I recounted for her all the ways that 2015 disappointed, how I struggled and simmered all year long. How I incubated.

As soon as I said that I remembered choosing “flight,” and I laughed out loud with the instantaneous recognition that flight was in fact exactly what the year had been about.

2014 was a swift kick in the ass right out of the proverbial nest. And in 2015, while I didn’t fly as high or gracefully as I’d hoped, I didn’t hit the ground. Technically, I flew.

So as I prepare for the incendiary year ahead, I remind myself to stay curious, trusting, and open, because the fire that I want is surely coming, and not in the way I expect.

Yesterday didn’t bring me a Hollywood-type romance, thank god. But someone did back into my car and dent my fender. I’m taking it as a good omen, like red wine spilled on a wedding dress. This, this will be my year. Whatever that means.