2018: A Blank Slate, A Blank Stare

For most of my life, the arrival of a new year made me feel a little giddy, like the first day of school or Christmas morning when I was a kid.

This year, for some reason, the change from 2017 to 2018 has left me feeling like a disembodied dishrag: seriously wrung out and in no condition to  care, much.

I’ll probably feel this way until the present administration is consigned to the ash heap of history–and the sooner that happens, the better, the whole lot of them.

There is just too little good on the immediate horizon to look forward to. It’s depressing!

So I have to devise ways to feel good (since I don’t drink, smoke or use drugs) instead of just expecting good to show up in my life…which has always been pretty much a foregone conclusion up until the last election, when everything I thought I knew about America and Americans was turned on its head to reveal this country’s seemingly ever-present dark underbelly of racism, sexism, xenophobia and other fear-based, mean-spirited themes.

I’m contemplating getting top surgery this year so my body matches my mind better than it does right now. That will be a good thing. I’ve already started walking and exercising again, so I’ll be in tip-top shape for that and for tummy tuck surgery at the same time, if that’s possible. Getting a guy-like chest and getting rid of my shar-pei abdomen will be huge for me, so I’m looking forward to that.

But that’s months away. I will need to get a diagnosis of gender dysmorphia from a professional before a surgeon will take me on and before Medicare will agree to pay for it, I suppose. (The fact that my skin chafes and gets red and yucky under the folds of skin might be enough for Medicare to cover the surgeries, but I don’t know. My doctor can tell me that and can confirm that I have at least fourteen pounds of excess skin that impacts the wellbeing of my body.)

Maybe I need an “away” vacation. I haven’t gone anywhere in 12 years.

Maybe I need to hop in my vehicle, wave goodbye, and travel for several days…just get lost for a while. I’m reading again about the history of the Pacific Northwest, where I was born and where I live, and there are hundreds of historical places around here I haven’t visited properly. Although we camped all over Washington when I was young, I wasn’t really into history back then. But now that I’m old and will one day (not too long from now) be history (as in “he’s dead, Jim!”), the past isn’t as vague or impersonal as it was then. Real people lived here and created things that still exist. I want to see them: the forts, the ruts along the Oregon Trail, the graves of pioneers and natives, the places where pioneers faced their greatest physical challenges–Hell’s Canyon, the Snake River, stuff like that. Perhaps pondering their journeys and resurrecting their spirits will help resurrect my own and help me realize that today’s challenges are anemic–even laughable–when compared to theirs.

I dunno. I just feel lost in the wilderness. I’m having a dark night of the soul.

When it happens on New Year’s Day, it feels like twice the burden it otherwise would, I suppose…

I’ll get over it. I always do. I come from sturdy stock.

Blank slates exist to be written on. I’ll start on mine manana. Until then, adios!