In Loving Memory of Beth

You weren't just another fish to me. You were special. Mostly because you lived longer than a day but also because you were my final purchase before I left San Diego. I'll miss your sassy ways. I hope Lisa is planning a very elaborate memorial for you.

You are totally in fish heaven, Little Lady. Along with your predessor, Dwayne Lee.

Miss you, girl.

Shedding my skin

These past two years I think I've become who I'm going to be for the long haul.

Everybody does their evolving at some point, it just took me a while to go from monkey to man.

I've shed layers of the person I used to be and in return have emerged as something completely different. Each layer molting off over time, exposing a new, softer layer than the one before it. I guess I've become more forgiving of myself during this whole process.

It's made me more forgiving of other people, too.

I've shed my angel wings for more undelicate things, embracing the less refined parts of myself, giving away the poetry over prose parts to alley dumpsters and dirty street gutters.

Like stripping off rain soaked clothes in the middle of a storm, I've become lighter, freer, shivering in my new, thinner skin.

But it's better this way, I think.

I'm more exposed than I've ever been and for once in my life, I don't think that makes me more vulnerable.

This is a happy feeling.

There have been moments of crisis, doubt, phases of indifference. I've sat on the edge of candid conversations that didn't turn out the way I thought. Relationships have bloomed and withered in moments that seem as long as lifetimes.

And with them, each layer came off. Wet rags flung to the ground.

So here I am. Baptized by the seven hundred and thirtieth turn of the calendar page.

I can't wait for tomorrow, and not just because I get better looking every day ...

And the most I'll do is throw shadows at you ...

Another year, another chance to take a good hard look at yourself.

I guess I look back at this year with a kind of bittersweet fondness, like a mother watching from the family van, as her child goes off to college. All that time, effort and care that went into shaping them for the future, just to watch them walk off into the distance and make the same mistakes that you did.

For all its ups and downs, this has been an amazing year for me. I know I've changed a lot--gained back some things that somehow I lost along the way. I still worry about getting hurt although I have found myself to be surprisingly unguarded. That was something I didn't expect.

I've grown closer to some people and further from others. I don't try to hold so tightly to the past anymore, instead I've traded it in for more room for my future, like an empty parking spot in a garage full of new experiences.

This year I have loved and lost so continuously that it doesn't scare me anymore. Each major heartbreak always offset by a minor victory, showing me what's important in the scheme of things. I've given up on believing in absolutes and finality's.

I still dive head first into things, falling in love with everyone I meet. But instead of looking at that as a bad thing, as something to strive to change, I've embraced it as one of my best qualities.

I look at relationships differently. It's like I've taken a baseball bat and swung blindly, shattering the perfect snow globe into millions of little pieces, exposing what's really inside; two dimensional people forced to stand in front of a fake background for eternity. Meanwhile trying to weather the storm each time life decides to flip you upside down and shake.

It turns out, you better really like who's in there with you. And I really do.

I've realized that I know I'm alone if I am with or without you and have accepted that as an impossibility that will always haunt our pasts, presents and futures. It's changed what I see when I fast forward my life.

But not who.

I've decided not to settle down or for anything less. That without a little drama, life would be just a bunch of Tuesdays. That I'm not perfect, and that's what I'm looking for anymore. To always be kind and questioning. And most importantly, that no matter how old I get, I can always come home and feel like a kid again.

And I like that.

So here's to a year of lasts, of firsts, of in betweens and maybes. A year of warmth and discovery and forgiveness.

Here's to a present of cheap tabs and excitement, of late nights, vulnerability and impulsiveness.

And here's to a future of infinite possibilities, to the certainty of trips and stumbles along the way and the hope that when and where I do fall, the ground will always be soft and forgiving.