with just more than 2 hours to go, i got my end-year recap in. whoo.

man, am i just NOT going to miss 2012 one red bit. jesus CHRIST, what a stone bitch of a year. i mean, some good things happened. the man and i got a new place together, just us. some fun things went down. i made some amazing new friends, IRL and on twitter. [hi, friends!] we do not face the specter of mitt fucking romney being inaugurated as president in three weeks. it wasn’t a total wall of awful.

but it was pretty freaking rotten. i spent almost the entire year fighting off irrational bad actors in my very own family, and those wounds have not been cauterized as of yet. my professional situation, while stable, is a gigantic thorn in my side, and every indication is that the horrorshow of the last few months is going to be the new normal. resistance is futile, my friends. the country continues to devolve into a shallow, insecure, self-centered mass of insanity, governed by a pack of raving jackals and so deeply afraid of anything coming between us and our fucking guns that we’ll countenance the formation of an armed “security” state. y’all, if i wanted to live in south sudan, i’d have moved there; you didn’t have to bring its standard of safety to me. things look a little bleak as we enter 2013.

even so, i have to have some kind of faith that, though it’s been a long december, there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. i listen to that song a lot – i love it – but it’s clear that it’s been a year-end anthem of mine. and i keep waiting for the chorus to ring true. i really do. and each year, i sing the refrain with a little more desperation. come on, year, be better than the last, please. you kinda have to, right?

in some respects, mostly romantic ones, the years have improved. 2010, 2011 and 2012 gave me increasing improvement in my love life, and i LOVE that. the man is a singular and precious blessing, and for him alone, it’s all been worth it. he makes the dark times survivable and the bright times even brighter. he is my most precious friend, and i can’t stress it hard enough. i can’t remember all the times i’ve tried to tell myself to hold on to these moments as they pass…

but really, the rest of it? i’m just waiting for the downward trend to end. i am waiting for my professional life to at least level off. i am waiting for my financial life to plateau as well; i mean, thanks to the student-loan bubble, i will be an indentured servant until i’m 55, at which point i have a huge tax bill to look forward to as the benevolent federal government so graciously “forgives” my indentured servitude, but gives me income to the extent of the forgiveness and taxes the hell out of me. (oh yeah, lawyas; get ready for THAT one. they don’t tell you about that when they give you IBR, do they? another lie you’re told when you’re told that this is GOOD debt. snort.) i am waiting to be shut of certain toxic family members once and for all, but they will. not. go. away. why people can’t be as kind and generous as possible to their own blood is a total mystery to me, but i’ve been given blood relations on both sides of our family who seem to take amazing delight in their own narcissistic misery sucking the life blood out of everyone else.

so it’s december 31, 2012. tomorrow is a new year. let’s close the book on this ridiculousness and leave it the hell behind in 2012. 2013 needs to be better. i don’t know how many times i can beg this year to be better than the last.