A perfect new year

For reasons I can only partially understand, I am easily sucked into the romanticism of the ideal. It is surely chemical, since I have spent my life since puberty trying to be perfect, a feat I have only recently realized and accepted is beyond my capabilities. As my psychiatrist noted when I told her that I wish I'd known Laurie Berkner's song I'm Not Perfect when I was young: "You could have sang it but it wouldn't have been with feeling."

My book club recently read Little Women. Despite knowing full well that a poor mother of 4 daughters with her husband away fighting a war cannot possibly be as light and cheery as Marmee, I got sucked into all of that "la-la-la, rose-colored glass life" where everything works out wonderfully. While there may be some hard times, some squabbles, everyone comes through it all just smashing (or if not smashing it is only alluded to in brief). So not real life, but I am naive enough to wonder why I am not as good a mother as Marmee because I'm not chipper and wise and forever patient. I am naive enough to dream of having 4 daughters of my own and imagine what an astounding life we would all have loving each other. And my life could be all these things if only I weren't REAL. God is a more ambitious author than Louisa May.

And then there is this whole New Year's business. Tomorrow when I awaken, the air will feel no different than it does right now in 20o6. My cells will have only aged 12 hours or so. Provided an asteroid doesn't set off the end of days, I will still have my same house, same family, same head, same life. But there is this stupid little part of me that thinks maybe, just maybe tomorrow will be different. My mood disorders will start getting alot better. I will get pregnant in January. D will get a really good bonus.

I guess most people would just call this hope, but I find it scary. I don't know what to do with hope because I don't know what to do or how to feel when hope turns into disappointment.

The other day it really hit me that I don't get what I want in life. I don't mean my life isn't excellent because I would be an idiot to think I've got it hard, but somewhere along the line, and maybe this is a problem of modern American life that everyone experiences and not just me, I got the idea that I'm supposed to get what I want in life. Things are supposed to go my way. If I work hard and do the "right" things, I will get what I want. If I go to college, get a decent job, marry a decent guy, have a nice house... life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and happiness means getting whatever you want, right? Happiness means things don't go caterwompuss.

I'm starting to understand that happiness is having life go caterwompuss and dealing with it as best you can and understanding that you are only 1 person and sometimes life sucks and sometimes life rocks and you don't know how your world will shift in the next 15 minutes. Life is inherently about survival, period. Modern life gives me the time and luxury to fret about happiness and expecting to get what I want.

Somewhere along the line I began subscribing to a notion of a perfect life so I fall prey to idealism where I find it. So it will take me a couple weeks to work through this and by then I'll be writing 2007 on my checks without hesitation and finding that things are going a little caterwompuss but I'm doing alright.