happy new year

I've found a lot of times that the more tired I am, the harder it is to sleep - so if it holds true tonight, I will be awake until morning.

Last night I read my Letter - a girl mostly secure and happy still wrote it to me at 16; a girl still a girl and loving laughter and family and excited and confused in a different and new thing she did not know was love too, beginning to realize the loss of growing, and laughing to push away the thought and pull a little blanket of a world closer.
I am not her. And I am her still.
I think she was not me, either, but she got a feeling of what may be and then knew to write the simplest words to break her own heart.
Know that there are times when all is right and well, and times that are not so.
Oh God is still good then.

Sometime around 2 AM I will write another letter for next December. I have been writing these since I was 14 or 15 and am told it's a bit of a childish thing, but still I get half drunk with sleepiness every new year's eve and sprawl out on the floor to write a 15 or so page missive to myself before passing out with my forehead on my paper, and the next day I seal it up and open it again a year from then and it helps me to listen to myself and remember who I was and maybe you can't see why but I need that more than grown up things.

*

There will be a frightening lot of People coming here tonight, but oddly I'm not frightened, there's something about a party, and I don't even feel like hiding, I feel breathless and happy and like loving everyone, and tonight there will be time passing and people smiling and the first breath of a new day, and probably a balanced combo of alcohol, speeches and crying. What a grand thing is living.

Here being overcome with sentimentality and one silvery premature tear I have to say to all of you that read this, you are completely beautiful, you and you and you and you and you and you and if I forgot a you I love you too, and I wish that each is warm and glad and merry new year to all and every one in the whole wide world.