17

A while back, my mom, pointed out that many of the “woke community” are stuck on the number 17. I thought it was odd. I had never had any love for the number before. So, why was ot now the number that came to mind each time I went to exaggerate or enumerate.

“There are 17 billion things I need to do,” I would say.

17

I actually kind of hate the number. It’s odd. It’s prime. Two things I am not fond of in numbers if I am being (nerdy and) honest. I worked hard to start to work another number into the minutiae of my dialect. I was always surprised at how quickly 17 came to mind, even in the face of my best efforts.

17

Yuck!

Then I was reading The Witching Year by Diana Helmouth, and she spoke about her experience living in NYC during the time of Trump being elected. The mourning that happened there when that decision was announced and went live. And I thought, “Maybe that’s it!” Maybe it was a collective wound that we “the woke people” (whatever the fuck that means) sustained when that decision went active. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the truth (by the way, 2017 is also a prime number-YUCK!). But I also know that while I hated the turn that I felt in the tide of our country during that year, it wasn’t a personal offense. Also, I did my best to let that slide off my shoulders, not holding it too close to who I was.

But there were other forces at work and I think I am beginning to understand them, at least in the context of me. You see, in 2017, I ended a 7 year cycle of…well, no other way to put it….bliss. It was the end of the first 7 years of Yvette and I being together. I was doing my best to take of me, take care of her, take care of our things. And I was doing an okay job of it. The girl in this picture was trying her best to be a good human.

Then like a switch had been thrown, it was gone.

Just like that.

And for 7 years, for a myriad of reasons, I have been wandering in a desert. It has been DARK. There were many points I almost did not continue the fight. But I did. And I made it!!

Tuesday, I started another effort to push back to a mindfully connected me. I am a little afraid, because now I know how quickly it can go and how deep it can take me. But Hozier’s lyrics are now floating to the surface:

And all things end
All that we intend is scrawled in sand
Or slips right through our hands
And just knowing
That everything will end
Should not change our plans
When we begin again
We begin again, hm-mm

My favorite line in that is: “And just knowing that everything ends should not change our plans, when we begin again.” Because we are all fucking here. STILL. Which means that we get to begin again.

Thus, I have dubbed 2024 as my year to do things badly. I still drawing breath. I still have the ability to start again. So, though I acknowledge that I must acknowledge my history (or else be doomed to repeat it), I choose to begin anew, knowing that it might all crash around me later. But what beauty will be wrought from that wreck? Who knows….until we get there.