dreamland

sixteen

Christmas had passed warmly despite the cool climate on the other side of our doors. It filled me with smiles and hot chocolate and thick sweaters.

Tomorrow, or in a couple of hours, the new year would begin and I felt so relieved for that. A new year meaning a new clean slate.
It felt like when you opened a pack of new pens and wrote the first letter on the top of a blank sheet of paper.
You don't know how much I was looking forward to the new year.
Each day, each month, and now calendar year, that passed by, eased the anger, the disaster and even the pain.
It seemed far, far, away like the stars in the sky. I swear, it felt so insignificant to me, unlike the stars.
I hardly thought of it.
Things just seemed so minuscule when distance is put in between, and they seemed even tinier with so much time having ticked on by.
I went on about my day, feeling high almost, so fucking glad that I was taking yet another giant step away from you.
As the minutes drew closer to the new year, I felt myself getting anxious.

My mother and father liked to spend it with simply us three. It had always been this way and it was what I was accustomed to.
My mom's face was flushed as it always was on New Year's Eve and my dad held on tightly to my hand. I think we all felt the spark, the promise of that year. We knew that it could only get better from now. We felt that like the warmth of the fire of my mom's scented candles and cackling with the logs.
Then the seconds became single digits and my mom had tears brimming in her eyes.
I, for a change wasn't making fun of my mom for that because I had some too.

You weren't my whole world or anything like that. You weren't even as big as a star in my universe, you were something like a meteor I think. You just came by slowly and everyone prepared for you, looked out their windows for you and then you passed on and the show was over. But the hell you put me through turned my world upside down and inside out. I was my own world and I was the one that hurt awfully.
I didn't deserve that, no, I didn't.
I deserved better and I felt that in this year, I would seek and find it.
In every sense.

So when the new year came, with pureness and more life, I hugged my mom so close I could feel the life in her. I felt the life she had and the love she had for me. I deserved this.
Her tears spilled as so did mine and my dad hugged us close, telling us he was proud of us.
I was proud of me too.
I kissed them both and told them I loved them because I felt it so wildly strong right then.
My dad chugged down his glass of champagne and so did we and I felt the stars run down my throat. I felt so far away from probably even this universe that had held so much ugly for me. I was looking down on this and choosing the parallel universe that actually held flower petals and sweet nectarines.
I was laughing as my tears rolled down my cheekbones and left them sticky.
I spread myself on the red couch as my parents stood and danced around the living room.
I think I deserved at least that.
I deserved to be loved and love back.

We ate our grapes, counting off the wishes with each one we popped into our mouth. You could say that I wasted all my grapes on all the same thing but it was a wish I really wanted to come true.
So it was worth it, unlike you.
I ate the last one and pulled on my coat, waving goodbye to my parents.

My best friend had thrown a big party at her brother's small apartment as she did every new year. It was a new year thing that still had not gotten old.

When I arrived the music was so clamorous it made my heart jump in my chest. I could hardly hear myself breath and much the less my shoes touch the soft carpet. I moved through kissing couples and a guy lighting a joint, saying that it was his first of the year.
Everyone had already welcomed the new year, but I knew that soon this would become just any other party to them.

A girl let go of the push-pop she held in her hand just as I walked through and confetti rained down on my head. She laughed elatedly and wished me a new year, I grinned and called out you too even though she probably couldn't hear me. I kept moving throw the mob of faces I knew and didn't until I heard my name.
I turned and saw her, the girl I was no longer friends with. The girl I used to share my green apples and Oreos with under the lab table in the sixth grade. The same girl that hadn't really ever cared about me or my feelings.