No Secret

I can't hide it any longer. I hate new years. I do. It makes no sense, I know, but I just feel uncomfortable about the entire situation. This is how it happened:

I saw the fear before I felt it. Dark red and a garish yellow-green, it hung like streamers from invisible rafters. I was minding my own business, taking a shower, closed my eyes for a moment and there it was. I opened my eyes immediately, trying to run from my own thoughts. But curiosity got the best of me and I had to know what the fear was about. So I closed my eyes again. The fear did not speak. I did not give it a chance. I recognized it, honest and empty, and then I yelled at it. "Why do you always come like this? You find me when I'm vulnerable, exposed. This is never fair." Then it answered. "Life isn't fair. Life marches on." And this, this is how I knew who had sent it. This was no regular fear, in fact this was not fear at all. It was Anticipation and Emptiness. Guilt. Future. Unknown. It was the new year, coming to haunt me prematurely. 


Only for the past few years have I felt uneasy about new year's eve, but each year these feelings have been revealing themselves sooner and this year is no exception. Is it the fear of the unknown? The feeling that the world is moving on though I've failed to do anything of real worth in one entire lap around the sun? Maybe it's the loss of control. The calendar will end, a new page will turn, and there is nothing any of us can do about it. I am small, and on new year's I am grossly aware of this. 


It always begins like this, threads stirring around me, sewing themselves into my skin. Then when the day finally arrives they burrow in and settle in the deepest part of my stomach. There I try to ignore them until the clock strikes twelve. At that point what's done is done and there is no going back. At that point I can think rationally once again and untie the threads. At that point, I know that it is just time - just an idea - moving forward as it does every day. But from now until then I will live trying to ignore these threads - the deep red and the horrible yellow-green - that have once again begun wrapping me in this cloak of unexplainable dread.