This year sucked.
I mean, not all of it, obviously. I’m not dead yet. Still walking and talking. I even accomplished some really amazing and important things that, in the rear view mirror, may eventually loom larger than the sucking. But for the most part, I spent this year crashing and burning after the stress and betrayals and hurts and failures of the awful year that came before.
People better known and more clever than I have been joking for months that 2018 was absolutely no less than three years long. I deeply resonate with that. Looking back at the first two thirds of this year, I can’t even say for sure what happened when because there doesn’t seem to be enough time for that much to have happened.
For that matter, the first third of this year blurs together with the last months of 2017. There was an awful lot of suck. Frankly, I don’t even know how to get into it without being accused of rumor mongering and poo-flinging, which is a large part of my radio silence over the last year and a half. The short version is that, following my departure from the HSA in November/December of 2017, I withdrew from public participation in the KC Pagan community entirely and lost a few friends along the way. I then proceeded to bleed on everyone within anime-blood-spray distance, and things only got more unpleasant from there.
Hands down, this has been the worst year for my mental health since 2004, which I spent almost exclusively hiding in the basement of The House on Shoal Lane. It even beat out Fall Semester 2012, which featured daily panic attacks and more reasons I will never trust a mental health professional. As unpleasant as it was to be around me, it was even worse to be me.
At the same time, there were some truly amazing accomplishments.
Even as other parts of my life were burning down around my ears, I spent the first three months of 2018 putting the final polish on my debut novel, getting the typesetting just right, and ultimately putting The Mark of the Wolf in print. I am now a published author. Bucket list item checked.
At some point last winter, a friend admitted to me that he was the proud owner of an under-used farrier’s forge. Over the summer, he, Kraken, and I set about teaching ourselves blacksmithing. I won’t say that we’re experts (or even very good), but I have now made three knives (mostly; I need to get a chainmail glove before I try to put an edge on them). Bucket list item checked.
(Between those two accomplishments, I have done everything that I dreamed of as a sixth-grade satyr. My childhood vision of my life is complete.)
After a year of trying and failing to get a D&D game off the ground, I launched my first 5th Edition campaign in a brand-new homebrew setting in March. The campaign is still going strong and a bunch of people I barely (if at all) knew are now my friends. While nothing compared to the preceding or following accomplishments, this is my first campaign since I stopped gaming for college in 2011, and has been one of my chief points of stability amidst the madness.
In June, the private working group Aradia and I have been hosting passed it’s one-year mark. At Samhain we came up with a motto.
At midnight New Years, as 2018 becomes 2019, I will have been with my primary partner Aradia for ten fucking years. This is an accomplishment that I did not, could not, envision as a child. Or even as an adult. Frankly, I’m struggling to wrap my head around any one putting up with me for that long even as it’s happening.
After a year long hiatus from public ritual, Aradia, Chirotus, and I submitted an application to perform a public ritual at Paganicon 2019. We were accepted, and our Classically-inspired purification ritual is currently scheduled to go just before the opening ceremony. (No pressure.)
In retrospect, regardless of how awful 2017 was, I think that a collapse this year was both inevitable and necessary. 2018 was the first year since 2011 (when I started Real Liberal Arts College in Sunrise, Indiana) that I haven’t been burning the candle at both ends. I knew since April that what I needed was isolation. It took till July or August before I got to the point where I just stopped returning messages. I should have just told (more) people that I needed to go away for a while and just done that instead of waiting until I Just Couldn’t Anymore and ghosting. I guess we’ll see in the coming months how badly those bridges are burned.
I want to end this on some clever note, maybe something upbeat. I don’t have it in me. But here we are, on the cusp of the new year. At risk of tempting fate, I’ll just take this moment to tell 2018 to fuck right off. You didn’t kill me, you fucking fuck. To the rest of you: raise a toast tonight to your own divinity, if nothing else. Raise one to the rest of us if you have it in you. I’ll see you all on the flip side.