Happy New Year! I hope 5772 is
better than 5771 for all of you.
Now, I know many of you will have no
clue what I'm talking about but this is my blog and therefore it's my
rules. My culture celebrates New Years differently and this is our
timeline. We're old at heart and tend to be a bit morose, so it's a long, drawn
out holiday with a lot of pontificating and fasting and atoning for sins. It is,
in the words of one wise soul,
"kind of a downer with a lot of talking and then suffering and then
followed by a lot of eating". In other words, it's a very Jewish
thing.
I found this year to be outrageously
hideous in terms of loss and grief. I know, I'm being a downer, but it's true.
I lost much of what I hold dear in some form or another and, well, it sucks. In
many ways, I lost my mother, my aunt, my sister, several children I adore, a
best friend, and a favorite past time. Besides the past time, the rest all
exist but not to me and it's heart breaking. Truly. There's no chance they'll
return except maybe the children if I chose to be evil...which I often do! But not now.
Loss is hard and terrible but it
would seem as if there has to be some rhyme or reason to it. There can't be
just loss and that's it. There has to be something positive that comes out of
it. Yet, for the life of me, I can't seem to find it. My culture makes this
holiday religious and looks to God and so forth, but I'm not interested in
that. I want to know what I can do to make this year better and deal with the
loss I've encountered. How can I look at it and make it not so terrible? How
can I make sense of it all?
As I've said before, I always
watched soap operas and they were all about my family to me. I made them my
life's work in academia and made friends watching them. They were significant
in so many ways to me that I can't say "It's just a TV Show". I don't
put them up there with life, liberty, and the pursuit of justice, but they're
up there to some extent. I'm just not joining a picket line for them.
I suppose every loss is leading you
in a new direction. Let's say that taking Todd and putting him on GH was not
losing OLTL, but giving the show a new life elsewhere. I see that. I'm not sure
I like it but I like it better than it just being gone. So, in some ways, that
works. Yet often it doesn't feel that way. It seems strange as maybe I don't
like the new one as much...or at all...and that makes the loss even worse.
I have a particular issue with
people who still look basically the same but act differently. I have to deal with Alzheimers eating away at
my mother’s brain, and my aunt’s, and turning them into people who look like
the women I loved, but they aren’t there anymore. Once in a while, there will
be an obnoxious crack from my aunt and I know, deep down, she’s still there. But seeing
her disappear again doesn’t just make the moment poignant but outrageously painful.
I never see that with my mother anymore. She's just lost in her own head.
I have to watch people who I loved
and were sources of fun and comfort walk away at a time when they’re needed
most. Although they look like those people I loved and enjoyed, they can’t be
as they wouldn’t act this way. The
scariest part is maybe they never were the people I saw. Maybe they were always
pretending to be something they aren’t. That’s painful as I believed in
something, and dedicated myself to it, only to see it be a sham. They’re
still there but they aren’t the people I know and loved as those people never
existed.
Then there are those people who were
taken from me by no choice of their own. They want to come back and they’re
still the same, only distance and circumstance keep them away. Those people, the ones who are innocent, are
the ones who keep me optimistic as maybe, some day, I’ll get them back. One day maybe I’ll open the door
and they’ll be there. That would be nice.
Ya see, this can all be related to
the loss of the past time. I was wrong
when I thought these shows would be around forever. I was wrong when I believed
that they could be some kind of a constant in an ever changing life. In the same way, I was wrong when I thought you could keep
people as you saw them and they wouldn’t be turned into something else. But,
maybe, just maybe, some of them will come back again and be just as they always
were. As if nothing has changed.
This year, maybe, things will be
reborn. Maybe I had to lose things to get new things that may not be better,
but what they are- new. Maybe I had to lose OLTL and AMC to get a new show that
has the best of both. Maybe I’m being
given back GH which I left 20 years ago. Funny, though as I didn’t miss it for
a minute. But I miss OLTL and AMC all the time.
Yet, I admit, I’m trepidatious. I’m
not sure I’ll like my characters when I see them now. I’m not sure I like
Starr. She’s whiny as the ingenue and not pretty enough to be a lead. Sorry,
Toots, it’s a fact. Was the old Starr a facade? Was she an illusion I bought into?
Or did she just grow up to be dull?
I guess we’ll see.
I don’t know about Todd but I’m
happy enough to wait. I see enough of what I enjoyed to be optimistic but the
fuckery took its toll and I need old Todd back STAT. I’ve got little left of
that old show and it’s all on his shoulders. He literally is carrying OLTL on
his back. That’s quite a feat and I think the character and the actor are
strong enough to do it. But he can’t do it forever. And that braying nag who
has been with him is making me want to quit forever. Can’t he be in scenes with
Tracy and Anna and John, for God’s sake. It’s a new year, Guys, how about that
for a resolution? No more Codd crap. Let the fuckery end.
I’ll be hopeful that one day, I’ll
turn on my TV and see Todd open his door to Viki. I know he’s getting Blair, so
that’s more a matter of “when”, not “only if”.
But, I have to admit, as much as I love Todd and Blair, I am Todd and
Viki’s bitch. I could watch them talk about nothing all day. I just love it. It not only is amusing, but
it feels like home. I could use that right about now.
So, I’ll focus on that as I head
into the end of my holiday season. I know that I won’t be getting the people
back I miss in real life, so I’ll focus on the “reel” life….for now. Sadly enough, I think there’s a better chance
there.
The High Holidays are about atoning
for your sins from the last year to start fresh as the new one begins. I can’t say I’ve had too many sins to atone
for this past year, except for calling Carlivati “Nimnuts” and making cracks about Laura
Wright’s gigantic ass and terrible bleach job. Other than that, I’m not sure I
sinned at all.
See, told you it was a bad year. Maybe this one will be better. What's life without a little sin?
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