I know an increasing number of people who actually hate New Year's celebrations. I find myself agreeing with them. Like many holidays, this particular one involves obligations and measuring sticks, whereby you prove your worth as a socially successful human being by fulfilling expecations like having plans, friends, and money. New Year's Eve is one of those nights when you absolutely must have plans -- when if you are to display any dignity or merit at all as a person, you've got to be going out somewhere, and if through some misfortune you're stuck at home, you feel like nothing but a loser, flipping through channels as television broadcasts of other people's parties and popularity insult you while the hours tick away towards midnight, your time. And actually, other people's time zones too, depending on your access to cable. So, of course this is what happened to me last night. I had initially made plans with some friends for them to come over to the house, such that we could while away our evening with conversation, cider, wine, and a copious selection of food prepared by Broken for the occasion. She actually put together a tremendous feast for our enjoyment spread out on several huge platters -- vegetables, dip, homemade rolls, little hotdogs with buns baked around them, tasty little sandwiches, garlic bread, and a curry served steaming hot on a bed of rice. She also made a wonderful punch with raspberries, apples, lemons, cinammon and brown sugar. As it brewed it made the house smell wonderful. Martha Stewart herself would most certainly have been well pleased by the festive pains taken. To make the evening complete, we had spent most of the entire day cleaning the house; from the upstairs bathroom to the grubby kitchen on the first floor. My bedroom sparkled; it had become a wreck during our holiday mania as we attempted in the two days before Christmas to wrap presents, feed ourselves and pack for a trip to Toronto, and last night was the first night I'd managed to get any true cleaning accomplished.
It should have been a very wonderful, successful New Year's Eve, with happiness and goodness and comfort.
Oh -- that's foreshadowing, by the way.

One of the people invited over was my friend occasionally hinted at in various past Snivels over recent weeks. This is a person I think I am falling in love with. I'm not going to tell that story tonight, though -- I have promised to finish it, but this will be another time. Anyway, I was looking extremely forward to her coming over, since we hadn't seen one another for any real amount of time in over a week. We'd been through some near-misses before New Year's Eve, plans which had fallen apart due to unavoidable things like bad weather and family obligations, and even the childish antics of her asshole of a roommate. I was betting everything on seeing her last night, because I was feeling lonely, and sad, and very... well... needy. Needy in a rather unhealthy way I haven't felt in some time. And it had seemed like such a certainty that the night would have worked out. All the arrangements were made; all the refreshments were provided. The friends were due to arrive, the punch simmered on the stove, my room twinkled with the merry glow of three different sets of Christmas lights -- the multi-program flashing sequences of the gigantic string which runs the perimeter of my ceiling, the arrangement of lights along the shade of my lamp which looks like tangles of barbed wire, and the campy nostalgic bubble-lights on the miniature tree up on a pillar beside my window. It was an idyllic scene from any twenty-something holiday.
So imagine my surprise when one-by-one, all the grand plans of the evening began cracking apart and crumbling to my feet. Phone call by phone call. Overindulgence ruined the evening. People went out to dinner, ate too much, or drank too much, and found themselves too stuffed or too intoxicated to make it anywhere but home. I called my friend, hoping to confirm her arrival, when instead she just made sad noises and apologized but, sadly, she was staying in for the night, too. Understandably, the weather was miserable once again, and she lived quite far away, but I was listening to the sound of the metaphorical bursting of metaphorical bubbles, and boy did I ever wind up deflated, too.

Broken and I feasted on the platters sitting expectently upon my nice, clean floor, but she had a headache borne of stress and exhaustion and disappointment, so I put her to bed with some painkillers, a glass of water, and some snuggling. I was unable to sleep, myself, though, so I crept back into my room to sulk. I couldn't help myself -- I was hurt and angry. Well, wouldn't you be? Everyone I knew was having a great night at some level, and meanwhile I was left surrounded by food I didn't want to eat, cheery lighting which irritated me, and a sense of abandonment. I think that's the worst possible feeling -- feeling as if you don't matter to the people you care about. Lately it's been a feeling which has grown, as friends grow busy with classes and jobs, engage in relationships and make new friends, and overall I'm left feeling really alone this portentous New Year's Day. My friend (the one who didn't come -- I mean, the one I love who didn't come), for Christmas, had given me an Edward Gorey planner (doubly neat because I got a different version of one last year for my un-birthday from Caira), and I'd really wanted to make some amazing, clever, even cheerful inscription for the first day of the new year. But I really have nothing to say today, except lots of miserable sniveling, which at least gives you something to read.
Unwilling to see the countdown tick by in such a state of pain and anger, I programmed a CD to play very specifically in accordance with my mood, and had a nap. I set my alarm clock to just before midnight, in the foulest possible spirits, just so I could catch the New Year, because I hate sleeping through them (something I haven't done since puberty, I'm sure). I woke up, midnight came and went, and I was in a terrible mood.

I felt very evil indeed, and was just getting under the blankets again after stomping around moodily for ten minutes when my phone rang. I debated answering it. My voice mail message right now is me gloomily saying "Happy GodDAMN New Year," sounding all the world like evil Eeyore. I knew it was this certain person I am very sweet on. I very much did not want to deal with more vagueness and disappointment. I thought about letting the phone ring just one more time so that my voice mail would get it. I answered the phone.

She wished me a Happy New Year with all due enthusiasm (when I'm miserable, and I want the world to know it, the thing that bugs me most is when someone talks to me as if there weren't a thing wrong in the world, happy and oblivious as can be, especially when they're the cause of my misery and (should) know it), and I put on my fake smile and wished her the same with as much cheer as I could summon, which was only really a little. She kept wishing me a Happy New Year, so I kept doing the same, and she made an allusion to Prince and 1999, and I laughed lamely, feeling sad and generally strung along, because in my mind I was seriously upset and she was calling me like she didn't understand. But she said I was the first person she called for New Year's, and asked me if she were the first person to call me (which she was). She kept wishing me a happy new year, and at some point made kissy noises into the phone. Then she asked me what I was doing tomorrow, to which I replied I didn't know -- hoping this meant she was asking me to do something with her, which she was. She told me she had the whole day off and told me to call her when I woke up.

I'm not made out of ice. Or if I am, I still melted. Just before she hung up, I told her how very much it meant to me that she called, how much happier I felt, and thanked her again. I was nearly moved to tears; I'd been dealing with a lot of pain all night long, feeling very secondary and lonely, and all I really wanted was to feel special and important to a person I loved. So she told me again to call her in the morning, which was a promise I clasped to my heart. So I called some friends and wished them the same cheer I'd just been bestowed. Come morning, I ran to my phone and eagerly called my friend, envisioning a glorious day spent together in its entirety, where we could talk and laugh and listen to music, watch TV or some movies, and generally end up with me trying to make her as happy as possible, just in the delight of finally having her company. And certainly it seemed like we were seriously making plans for the day, but she still had to get dressed and drink coffee and all those things, and promised to call me when she was ready. The only foreseeable catch was that her parents have this Scottish tradition of blessing a household with luck on the first day of the New Year (involving a tall dark stranger crossing the threshold), so in keeping with their habits they were likely to come over and pick her up for a big day together with dinner and family time. She had been trying to call them all morning to cancel, so that she could see me. This only seemed like a remote problem, though -- so I soaked in some bath bombs, dressed up right purty like, and prepared myself for a day of fun. Eventually I resigned myself to washing dishes to take my mind away from the non-ringing phone. By five o'clock I was calling her house again, to find that she had indeed been abducted by her parents. It's not that I'm selfish enough to blame her for being spirited away, but I am selfish enough to be extremely sad and very hurt.

Just once I want to feel like I'm really important and special. Just once I want to know that there isn't a thing or a person which could keep someone I love, and my friends in general, from seeing me that day. I want to feel that important. Today I don't. Not at all. I wasted my entire day sitting by the phone. If my friend tells me we can get together tomorrow, you know that I'd do the same thing again. I need attention. I need validation. I need... hugs.

I stepped on a thumbtack today. Ben is almost finished moving out, but in the process of doing so has left dozens of thumbtacks in his room, on the floor. I had thought he managed to vacuum them all up, but to my surprise one had been knocked into the hallway, which was where my bare left foot came upon it this morning as I paced and waited for my friend to call, and in impatient irritation had taken to shooing the cats away from my room. It went in quite deeply; I had the most unpleasant sensation of "tugging" from inside the wound as I drew the thick pin out from the bleeding flesh just below my toes. I could feel the tack coming out, right to the sharp barby tip which only reluctantly withdrew from my root at the cost of increased pain. Anyway, I'm upset enough to ignore the obvious need to go to a hospital for a tetanus shot, and Broken (at least) loves me enough to call the hospital and determine that I really should get a tentatus booster within the next twenty-four hours, which actually makes me more reluctant to do anything about it. I mean, hey, who knows -- maybe I'll die or something.

Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.

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