A new year will be here as soon as a few hours. It’s hard for me to believe another year has come and nearly gone, not only in reality but also since I’ve last offered anything to this blog. What can I say? For me, the year 2010 has brought with it many surprises, most of which caused me to reflect deeply on my life and it’s true worth (I think contemplating the actual purpose of one’s life is probably a task better accomplished once first determining if the life in question even has any worth to begin with).
To say the least, this year has been one of the most difficult ones I’ve experienced thus far, beginning at the very start of 2010 when I learned I’d lost my one and only aunt to a sudden stroke. I still remember clear as day where I was when I got the text message on my phone as I was still living in Morocco. It is not one I wish to rehash, but suffice it to say I certainly was not expecting to call home and find out my Auntie had headache one day, gone to sleep and never awakened. Dealing with her death was (and still has been) an experience like no other I’ve ever had in my 30 years. I’m sure anyone who has lost someone s/he truly loves in such a sudden way can empathize. She was the second person I’ve lost on the paternal side of my family and, unlike when my grandfather passed after fighting a bout of cancer over a long time, she went unexpectedly in the night. With each passing day, I think of her but still manage to find much more comfort in knowing she is not here anymore to be subject to the impending BS many of us will encounter in the near future. I digress, though. I don’t mean to get deep.
Currently, I sit here on American soil, alongside my husband and our cat of 6 years, for whom my mother-in-law has been so gracious enough to care while we were overseas. As I type this, I am reminded of where I was a year ago on this night – with a sole friend from my school, both of us wandering the cold, rainy streets of Rabat. We walked for over an hour, looking for some hotel to toast in the New Year. As we walked the empty streets, we were harassed by drunken male passersby as they drove alongside us on the main street. I remember snapping on a car full of guys, hurling profanities at them in English, only to find they actually understood me when one of them spit out an, “I’m sorry.” In the end, we never found a place to party, and we both ended up back at my apartment within one minute of the New Year’s arrival. In my refrigerator was a bottle of vodka left behind by my old roommate, who had just gone back to the U.S. a few days prior. We managed a shot apiece from the remnants in the frosted bottle and downed them, more in recognition than celebration of the New Year which had just come in. Not too long after, she left to back to her apartment, and I was alone again, only accompanied by Habibi and my newly-purchased netbook. I messed around on the internet until 5:00am, only so I could wait around to call home and tell my family and friends in Atlanta Happy New Year (due to the five-hour time difference). Once I was done, it truly hit me it was the first New Years in my entire life I had spent alone, oddly enough in another country, a thought I mulled over as I promptly fell asleep. I am happy this is not the case this time around…but I’m even happier just to be around this time!
All in all, it’s been a helluva year. I can’t say that 2010 was such a great year for me as it began on such a somber note and kind of just proceeded from there. I certainly spent a good deal of my days this year depressed, frustrated, aggravated and just confused. In light of things, though, I would say 2010 was definitely a year of enlightenment. I was certainly enlightened, awakened to many, many things about myself, my family and friends, but most importantly, the world around me. It’s certainly notable I only started to become aware of so much to which I’d previously been ignorant shortly after my aunt passed away. Given the path I am on now, I am certain my life will be anything but meaningless.
I went through most of this year in a daze, it seems. Since being back in the U.S., I can’t say I’ve been entirely motivated to succeed. Perhaps this is because I have a new perception of what success is and if it is something to which I ought to aspire anyway. I think more than anything, I am ready to take what I’ve learned during this 365-stint around the sun and use all of it to improving the quality of my life and those I love in a truly relative way. To all those who are reading, I implore you to do the same with this new year God is about to allow you to enter, even if you only are afforded a few days, weeks or months of it. Hell, none of us really know when our number is up – I truly believe that now.
With regards to the next step to take, I’ve decided I really like teaching, but I need to challenge myself a little more. I’m still trying to decide if this means I ought to go back to get another degree. I can’t say I really want to; it just seems like the right thing to do. Still, these days, I’m not into doing what seems right anymore…but that’s another story. I know I’m old enough and wise enough at the point to know better. I’m currently fighting between what I think I want and going with I truly want, as far as staying in the U.S. or leaving again. I’ve found that, all things considered, I prefer to live abroad, or at least I would for a little while longer. The only thing I have to keep me here is family. I’m wondering how it will all go down. Within the next week, I’ll know if I got one of two jobs – one working as an ESOL program coordinator at an educational center here in Duluth or one as a teacher at an all-female university in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. There’d clearly be pros and cons to either, though I think I already know in my heart which I’ll choose. I just feel like there’s so much to do in such a short amount of time. It’s been the first time in a long time I felt like I was just floating, and now that I am starting to truly see what is around me, I realize how much time I have wasted. Actually, I’d venture to say this notion doesn’t apply to me but to the majority of the masses. Most of us are walking around in a daze, wasting time that isn’t ours to wastes, coveting things which really don’t matter, failing to see through the wool which has been pulled over our eyes. It is my most sincere prayer though that, in 2011, all of us begin to wake up and not be frightened by what we find but, rather, beseech God for the courage to face the truth and the wisdom to negotiate it. Only when each person truly awakens will s/he realize how much s/he really doesn’t now and get an idea of how precious our time on this earth really is. All in all, though, I know more than anything, my desire for my life in the upcoming year is not to fake it as much as I did in 2010. I haven’t the energy for living under such pretenses any longer. As a matter of fact, the only thing that scares me about the thought of beginning 2011 is the possibility of living through it like I allowed myself to live this one.
Still, let me end this on a joyful note….Happy New Year, everyone!
