Don't read the last page
But I stay when you're lost, and I'm scared, and you're turning away
I want your midnights
But I'll be cleaning up bottles with you on New Year's Day
The promise of a fresh start is why most people, Taylor's found, look forward to a new year. A time to make resolutions, often of improvement, a chance to rectify old mistakes in place of better choices. Out with the old and in with the new.
It was an entirely different ballgame if you had anxiety. The black hole of time between Christmas and New Year's Eve had always filled her with a kind of odd, inexplicable dread. She managed to have an existential crisis about it every year since she was eleven years old and everyone she'd brought it up to looked at her like she was insane.
At first, she had thought it was just because a new year officially marked the end of the holiday season and loving Christmas, so much, it didn't sit quite right. That would've been a perfectly reasonable explanation and one she suspected, anyone could buy without much question.
She had so wanted it to be as simple as all that. How could she possibly go into how difficult it felt? Typically, if someone didn't keep their unrealistic resolutions, they shrugged it off and moved on with their life. They certainly didn't dwell, frozen in terror for an entire month afterwards, beating themselves up because they failed to organize the spice rack in the pantry.
Even resolving to stop making such stupid declarations, acknowledging breaking them didn't determine her worth as a person barely helped.
She eventually figured out it was more the passage of time than anything else...how it was going by like a passenger train with no way to slow down. Keeping busy quieted the fear, but it would almost always resurface.
Every year, there was a party, though, which helped her ease into the bottomless pit of depression, usually accompanied by a hang over which made the thing all the more a fucking joy.
She couldn't say if it was the actual celebration that made it less painful or more the champagne, but either way, no matter if she was the one throwing the party, or just a guest, it was a definite distraction.
This one was a little different. Trav had won his game and they celebrated with friends at the house and it had felt good. She barely drank, high on natural elation and he'd been by her side. Her concentration was only on having a good time, celebrating both his victory and their impending six month anniversary which would be official tomorrow.
It wasn't until after midnight when he'd taken her out on the terrace to kiss her, wrapping those long arms around her body and holding her close because she'd gone out there with no jacket, did it creep up on her.
What terrible fucking timing, she thought. Why now, did she have to make realizations when this was such a nice moment? Was it the universe telling her to fuck off, that worry time began now?
"Taylor?"
She hadn't realized she pulled away until she noticed him looking at her, concerned.
The blood drained from her face. "I'm just really tired all of a sudden."
Travis put an arm around her. "I think we're gonna wrap up soon."
"You don't have to toss everybody out on my account..." She drew up her courage. "I actually have to talk to you about something. It can wait, though."
"Just let me make sure everyone's gonna get to where they need to be safely first and then I'm all yours."
The concern he always had for the people he loves never fails to reinforce that she chose the right person to be with and she kissed him again.
