posted by Ashalah on Life

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We are 16 days into the new year and I have been sick for approximately 14 of them. In fact, if you listen closely you can still hear me coughing. It’s the one thing that has seized my lungs and hasn’t let go. Not quite the committed relationship I was going for, but we’re breaking up soon. Promise.

We are 16 days into the new year and despite being sick for the majority of that time, this year is already better than at least the past few months. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders and while I go between frustrated, angry and confused some nights, for the most part I am happy. It’s been 16 days since I’ve extracted myself from the shit storm that was this past fall and am all the better for it. And when I say extracted, I mean I was planning on extracting myself before the shit storm dropped a bomb on me, I decided to stick around for just a little bit longer, and then said storm vanished without so much as an explanation. It was as if the storm wanted to prove that it really could treat me worse than it treated me before. Worse than anything has treated me before, really.

That’s over now though and I find myself oddly at peace. Sure, I want to scream out WHY and I want ANSWERS but I am no longer stressed out, I’m no longer crying myself to sleep. It is final. There is absolutely no turning back and I think I needed that more than anything. I needed to be free from it. The hope has died, and it needed to. For months there was always that hope. Then what I always wanted was dangled in front of me before cruelly being taken away with absolutely no explanation, no goodbye even. One day you’re talking about the Walking Dead and the next, silence.

So I’m moving on and it’s been wonderful. Sure, I’ve been sicker than I have been in a LONG time and was coughing my brains out for two weeks and feeling pretty much like I was going to die while sitting at my desk at work. Not to mention I sounded like a man going through puberty. I was a hot mess. But it allowed me to read a lot, focus on other things other than the storm and walk away from a horribly bad situation. I’ve claimed new addictions to White Collar and now The West Wing (holy crap, guys, you all told me it was amazing BUT SERIOUSLY. SO AMAZING.), I’ve journaled a lot, I’ve made life decisions and then changed my mind about fifty times about them.

I have promised myself I will eat healthier and work out more and this week I threw away my mayonaise and took back up Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred (and can’t maneuver stairs very well because of it). I want to blog and write more, even though my winter’s writer’s block is at an all time high. I want to read more books and have already finished three and am on my fourth. I want to cook more and so far have made spaghetti and meatballs, and chicken tikka masala from scratch.

I didn’t make resolutions this year but I’m determined for this year to be better than the last. That this year I’m going to be happy and push myself and do things just for me. I’m not going to be afraid anymore. I’m making a concerted effort to make my life better. So far, so good. (Let’s just work on that health thing, ok body?)

2013, I’m thinking I like you.

Now I must go drink some coffee. Somehow I spit out a post without any caffeine in my body and I’m starting to wonder if I’m making any sense anymore.